She was apparently listening to the music; in reality she was hurrying back mentally over half a dozen years. She had never had much to do with the stout German philosopher, but she knew enough of him to scorn the faint hope that he might have forgotten her name and her individuality. Etta Bamborough had never been disconcerted in her life yet; this incident came very near to bringing about the catastrophe.
“At what time,” she asked, “is he coming in?”
“About half-past nine.”
Etta had a watch on a bracelet on her arm. Such women always know the time.
It was a race, and Etta won it. She had only half an hour. De Chauxville was there, and Maggie with her quiet, honest eyes. But the widow of Sydney Bamborough made Paul ask her to be his wife, and she promised to give him his answer later. She did it despite a thousand difficulties and more than one danger—accomplished it with, as the sporting people say, plenty to spare—before the door behind them was opened by the attendant, and Karl Steinmetz, burly, humorously imperturbable and impenetrable, stood smiling gravely on the situation.
He saw Claude de Chauxville, and before the Frenchman had turned round the expression on Steinmetz’s large and placid countenance had changed from the self-consciousness usually preceding an introduction to one of a dim recognition.
“I have had the pleasure of meeting madame somewhere before, I think. In St. Petersburg, was it not?”
Etta, composed and smiling, said that it was so, and introduced him to Maggie. De Chauxville took the opportunity of leaving that young lady’s side, and placing himself near enough to Paul and Etta to completely frustrate any further attempts at confidential conversation.
For a moment Steinmetz and Paul were left standing together.
“I have had a telegram,” said Steinmetz in Russian. “We must go back to Tver. There is cholera again. When can you come?”