"That man is the bearer of ill news, and Gerald knows it," was the young wife's unspoken thought as she left the two together.
M. Karovsky was a tall, well-built man, to all appearance some few years over thirty in point of age. His short black hair was parted carefully down the middle; his black eyes were at once piercing and brilliant; he had a long and rather thin face, a longish nose, a mobile and flexible mouth, and a particularly fine arrangement of teeth. He wore neither beard nor moustache, and his complexion had the faint yellow tint of antique ivory. He was not especially handsome; but there was something striking and out of the common in his appearance, so that people who were introduced to him casually in society wanted to know more about him. An enigma is not without its attractions for many people, and Karovsky had the air of being one whether he was so in reality or not. He was a born linguist, as so many of his countrymen are, and spoke the chief European languages with almost equal fluency and equal purity of accent.
"Fortune has been kind to you, my friend, in finding for you so charming a wife," he said, as he lounged across the room with his hands in his pockets, after closing the door behind Mrs. Brooke. "But Fortune has been kind to you in more ways than one."
"Karovsky, you have something to tell me," said Brooke a little grimly. "You did not come here to pay compliments, nor without a motive. But will you not be seated?"
Karovsky drew up a chair. "As you say--I am not here without a motive," he remarked. Then, with a quick expressive gesture, which was altogether un-English, he added: "Ah, bah! I feel like a bird of ill-omen that has winged its way into Paradise with a message from the nether world."
"Whatever your message may be, pray do not hesitate to deliver it."
But apparently the Russian did hesitate. He got up, crossed the room to one of the windows, looked out for half a minute, then went back and resumed his seat. "Eight years have come and gone, Gerald Brooke," he began in an impressive tone, "since you allied yourself by some of the most solemn oaths possible for a man to take to that Sacred Cause to which I also have the honour of being affiliated."
"Do you think that I have forgotten! At that time I was an impetuous and enthusiastic boy of eighteen, with no knowledge of the world save what I had gathered from books, and with a head that was full of wild, vague dreams of Liberty and Universal Brotherhood."
"The fact of your becoming one of Us is the best of all proofs that the cause of Liberty at that time was dear to your heart."
"But when as a boy I joined the Cause, I was ignorant of much I have learned since that time."