“On principle. Never tell a woman that which is not interesting enough to magnify into a secret.”
Paul turned over his newspaper. He began reading again. Then, suddenly, he looked up.
“We are engaged to be married,” he observed pointedly.
Steinmetz took his pipe from his lips slowly and imperturbably. He was a man to whom it was no satisfaction to impart news. He either knew it before or did not take much interest in the matter.
“That makes it worse,” he said. “A woman only conceals what is bad about her husband. If she knows anything that is likely to make other women think that their husbands are inferior, she will tell it.”
Paul laughed.
“But this is not good,” he argued. “We have kept it so confoundedly quiet that I am beginning to feel as if it is a crime.”
Steinmetz uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, and then spoke after mature reflection:
“As I understand the law of libel, a man is punished, not for telling a lie, but for telling either the truth or a lie with malicious intent. I imagine the Almighty will take the intent into consideration, if human justice finds it expedient to do so!”
Paul shrugged his shoulders. Argument was not his strong point, and, like most men who cannot argue, he was almost impervious to the arguments of others. He recognized the necessity for secrecy—the absolute need of a thousand little secretive precautions and disguises which were intensely disagreeable to him. But he also grumbled at them freely, and whenever he made such objection Karl Steinmetz grew uneasy, as if the question which he disposed of with facile philosophy or humorous resignation had behind it a possibility and an importance of which he was fully aware. It was on these rare occasions that he might have conveyed to a keen observer the impression that he was playing a very dangerous game with a smiling countenance.