“And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without seeing you? And the others—Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman, Cartoner—are they going to St. Petersburg, too?”
“I do not know,” answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because a solitary promenader was passing close by them. “They never tell me either. But . . .”
“But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps, to see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only see into my heart!”
And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and waited for her to answer.
“Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it.”
“Ah!” said Kosmaroff. “Why—tell me why?”
But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue assuredly, and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With that skill which came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in which Kosmaroff trusted he got back into the straight path again at one bound—the sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and any wise man lose himself.
“It is for you that he stays here,” he said. “What a fool I was not to see that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?”
“I think he has found it quite easy to do it,” answered Netty, with an odd laugh. “No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who is clever and beautiful.”
“There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw.”