“Whatever is the best lie to tell,” burst in Paul—“as we seem to live in an atmosphere of them—I must go to Thors; that is quite certain.”
“There is no must in the case,” put in Steinmetz quietly, as a parenthesis. “No man is compelled to throw himself in the way of infection. But I know you will go, whatever I say.”
“I suppose I shall,” admitted Paul.
“And Catrina will find you out at once.”
“Why?”
Steinmetz drew in his feet. He leant forward and knocked his pipe on one of the logs that lay ready to light in the great open fire-place.
“Because she loves you,” he said shortly. “There is no coming the Moscow doctor over her, mien lieber.”
Paul laughed rather awkwardly. He was one of the few men—daily growing fewer—who hold that a woman’s love is not a thing to be tossed lightly about in conversation.
“Then—” he began, speaking rather quickly, as if afraid that Steinmetz was going to say more. “If,” he amended, “you think she will find out, she must not see me, that is all.”
Steinmetz reflected again. He was unusually grave over this matter. One would scarcely have taken this stout German for a person of any sentiment whatever. Nevertheless he would have liked Paul to marry Catrina Lanovitch in preference to Etta Sydney Bamborough, merely because he thought that the former loved him, while he felt sure that the latter did not. So much for the sentimental point of view—a starting-point, by the way, which usually makes all the difference in a man’s life. For a man needs to be loved as much as a woman needs it. From the practical point of view, Karl Steinmetz knew too much about Etta to place entire reliance on the goodness of her motives. He keenly suspected that she was marrying Paul for his money—for the position he could give her in the world.