"Unless M. de Bismarck has supplied you with the means of averting a singularly-unpleasant catastrophe, it may be that the answer to your question should be 'Yes'!"
She understood that he questioned, and said, drooping her proud, languorous eyes under the hard black stare of his:
"You would be wiser to speak in a lowered tone, when you refer to—that personage. One does not trifle with him—here or elsewhere!"
"The Pomeranian bear," said her companion, pouting a slightly swollen lip, and dabbing gingerly at his reddened nostrils with a voluminous cambric handkerchief exhaling the heavy perfume of opoponax, "has claws and fangs. Also a hug, in which friends of mine have stifled. But they were men and you are an enchanting woman!" He removed his cap and bowed; resuming: "Besides you went to M. le Ministre with a trump in your hand—a little Queen of Diamonds, fresh as a rosebud. Have you played her, may I ask?"
He got up, pocketing his handkerchief, came over to her and stood beside her, in the upright attitude which called attention to the disproportion between his huge torso and his too-short legs. He held his furred cap upon his hip with one hand, and with the other stroked his waved wedge-beard. The rasping sound made by his heavily-ringed fingers as they passed through the thick, crisp hairs irritated her to anguish. Yet not so long ago it had thrilled her to sensuous ecstasy.
"I played the girl—and I have lost!" Almost against her will a cry broke from her. "My God! what things he said to me! My God! what humiliations we women endure for men!"
"I had imagined, my Adelaide," said he of the Assyrian hair and profile, showing in a smile a double row of teeth so perfect that they struck the imagination as being carved out of two solid curves of ivory—"that you were playing for your own advantage—even when you played my game. Did M. le Comte mention me at any point of the interview?"
She started at the unexpected question. Her voice shook a little in the reply.
"He said that he had heard—that M. de Straz had lately visited Berlin. That his agents would tell him. Of course!"
"He said nothing of—a flying visit of mine to Sigmaringen?"