Maggie looked at him. Then she sat down.
“Tell me,” she said, “all that has happened since then.”
“I went back,” answered Steinmetz, “and we were duly exiled from Russia. It was sure to come. We were too dangerous. Altogether too quixotic for an autocracy. For myself I did not mind, but it hurt Paul.”
There was a little pause, while the water lapped and whispered at their feet.
“I heard,” said Maggie at length, in a measured voice, “that he had gone abroad for big game.”
“Yes—to India.”
“He did not go to America?” enquired Maggie indifferently. She was idly throwing fragments of wood into the river.
“No,” answered Steinmetz, looking straight in front of him. “No, he did not go to America.”
“And you?”
“I—oh, I stayed at home. I have taken a house. It is behind the trees. You cannot see it. I live at peace with all men and pay my bills every week. Sometimes Paul comes and stays with me. Sometimes I go and stay with him in London or in Scotland. I smoke and shoot water-rats, and watch the younger generation making the same mistakes that we made in our time. You have heard that my country is in order again? They have remembered me. For my sins they have made me a count. Bon Dieu! I do not mind. They may make me a prince, if it pleases them.”