"——but next time he will not meet with such fortune." Tweed rose and smashed down the window.
"Why do you recall these things to me?" said the other, huskily.
"Why will you make a fool of yourself?" was the heated retort. "I tell you that you shall not go back to Moscow if I can prevent it. There's not a woman on this earth who is worth running so great a risk for. If she will not answer your letters, you must forget her, that is all."
"You suggest an impossibility."
"And you suggest a madness. What are you gazing at? Do you recognise anybody?"
The other was looking across the roadway to where a tall, broad figure, in a massive fur-trimmed coat, was leisurely pacing the thronged pavement. Tweed repeated his question.
"I—I don't know," replied Stefanovitch, indecisively. "The face of that tall fellow—I thought it was familiar—the light is so bad—and a cab came between——"
"What, that fellow in the coat? How strange! I seem to know him, too. Even his back is familiar. Let me think. Where on earth did I meet—ah!—no, it's slipped me again. Yet I'm sure—almost sure—that I—got it, by thunder! The man's Vassilitch—Ivan Féodor Vassilitch, a countryman of yours; not a bad sort, but cold and hard—hard as sheet-iron. You have met him, perhaps?"
"The name is not familiar to me."