"Oh yes; let him in to me," she answered. "He is an old friend of mine."
Vaucher bowed. "What a happiness for him, then!" he said gravely, and opened the door of her dressing-room for her.
Prince Sarasin lost no time in making Truda's word good. By the time she was ready to receive him, he was waiting for admission. He strode in, burly in his uniform, and bowed to her effusively, full of admiration. He was a great dark Russian, heavy and massive, with a big petulant face not without intelligence, and Truda had known him of old in Paris. She looked at him now with some anxiety, trying to gauge his susceptibility. He had the spacious manners of a man of action, smiled readily and with geniality; but Truda realized that she had never before made him a request, and the real character of the man was still to find.
"Superb! Magnificent!" he was saying. "You have ripened, my friend; your power has grown to maturity. It is people like you who make epochs."
"Sit down!" she bade him. "I am a little tired, as you may think.
Your town is hard on one's nerves, Prince."
"Hard!" He laughed as he drew a chair towards her and seated himself. "It is death to the intelligence. It is suffocation to one's finer nature. It has a dullness that turns men into vegetables. I have been here now for three years, and till to-night I have not felt a thrill."
"No?" Truda spoke lightly of design. "But you are the Governor, are you not? You are aloof, far above thrills. Why, it was only last night, while I was driving home, that I found a dead woman in the street."
"I know," he said. "And a live baby; I heard all about it. If you had been an hour later they would have been cleaned away. I am sorry if you were shocked."
"Shocked?" repeated Truda. "I was not thinking of that." She shivered a little, and gathered her big cloak more closely about her. "But I had not heard—I did not know—what the Judenhetze really was. And I think the world does not know, or it would not tolerate it."
"Eh?" The prince stared at her. "But it has upset you," he said soothingly. "You must forget it. It is not well to dwell on these things."