She watched the two men meet and shake hands, in the English fashion, without raising their hats. She could see Cartoner's movements to continue his way, and Martin's detaining hand slipped within the Englishman's arm.
“What does it matter?” Martin was saying. “There is no one to see us here, at this hour in the morning. We are quite safe. There is Wanda, sitting on the seat, waiting for me. Come back with me.”
And Wanda could divine the words easily enough from her brother's attitude and gestures. It ought to have surprised her that Cartoner yielded, for it was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin—so determined, so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he turned and came towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm. She knew that it was written that he must come; divined vaguely that he had something to say to her which it was safer to say than to leave to be silently understood and perhaps misunderstood. She gave an impatient sigh. She had always ruled her father and brother and the Palace Bukaty, and this sense of powerlessness was new to her.
While they approached, Martin continued to talk in his eager, laughing way, and Cartoner smiled slowly as he listened.
“I saw you,” he said to Wanda, as he took off his hat, “and went the other way to avoid you.”
And, having made this plain statement, he stood silently looking at her. He looked into her eyes, and she met his odd, direct gaze without embarrassment.
“Cartoner and I,” Prince Martin hastened to explain, “travelled from Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it, it would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one would naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland. That is why he went the other way when he saw you.”
Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile. It would have been the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation. But Cartoner kept silent. He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit—very rare among men and almost unknown in women—of thinking before he spoke. Which habit is deadly for that which is called conversation, because if one decides not to give speech to the obvious and the unnecessary and the futile there is in daily intercourse hardly anything left.
“You see,” said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself, “in this province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own friends.”
“Even in a free country one does not pick one's friends out, like the best strawberries from a basket,” said Wanda.