"You heard that?" he asked slowly.
She hesitated for a moment.
"I heard something of the sort," she admitted. "To be quite candid with you, I think it was reported that the Chancellor was making a change on his own account."
"So that is what they say, is it? What do they know about it--these gossipers?"
"You were not allowed at the conference yesterday," she remarked.
"No one was allowed there, so that goes for nothing."
"Ah! well," she said, looking meditatively out upon the landscape, "a year ago the thought of that conference would have driven me wild. I should not have been content until I had learned somehow or other what had transpired. Lately, I am afraid, my interest in my country seems to have grown a trifle cold. Perhaps because I have lived in Vienna I have learned to look at things from your point of view. Then, too, the world is a selfish place, and our own little careers are, after all, the most important part of it."
Von Behrling eyed her Curiously.
"It seems strange to hear you talk like this," he remarked.
She looked out of the window for a moment.
"Oh! I still love my country, in a way," she answered, "and I still hate all Austrians, in a way, but it is not as it used to be with me, I must admit. If we had two lives, I would give one to my country and keep one for myself. Since we have only one, I am afraid, after all, that I am human, and I want to taste some of its pleasures."
"Some of its pleasures," Von Behrling repeated, a little gloomily.
"Ah, that is easy enough for you, Mademoiselle!"
"Not so easy as it may appear," she answered. "One needs many things to get the best out of life. One needs wealth and one needs love, and one needs them while one is young, while one can enjoy."
"It is true," Von Behrling admitted,--"quite true."
"If one is not careful," she continued, "one lets the years slip by.
They can never come again. If one does not live while one is young, there is no other chance."
Von Behrling a.s.sented with renewed gloom. He was twenty-five years old, and his income barely paid for his uniforms. Of late, this fact had materially interfered with his enjoyments.
"It is strange," he said, "that you should talk like this. You have the world at your feet, Mademoiselle. You have only to throw the handkerchief."
Her lips parted in a dazzling smile. The bluest eyes in the world grew softer as they looked into his. Von Behrling felt his cheeks burn.
"My friend, it is not so easy," she murmured. "Tell me," she continued, "why it is that you have so little self-confidence. Is it because you are poor?"
"I am a beggar,"--bitterly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Well," she said, glancing down the menu which the waiter had brought, "if you are poor and content to remain so, one must presume that you have compensations."
"But I have none!" he declared. "You should know that--you, Mademoiselle. Life for me means one thing and one thing only!"
She looked at him, for a moment, and down upon the tablecloth. Von Behrling shook like a man in the throes of some great pa.s.sion.
"We talk too intimately," she whispered, as the people began to file in to take their places. "After luncheon we will take our coffee in my coupe. Then, if you like, we will speak of these matters. I have a headache. Will you order me some champagne? It is a terrible thing, I know, to drink wine in the morning, but when one travels, what can one do? Here come your bodyguard. They look at me as though I had stolen you away. Remember we take our coffee together afterwards. I am bored with so much traveling, and I look to you to amuse me."
Von Behrling"s journey was, after all, marked with sharp contrasts.
The kindness of the woman whom he adored was sufficient in itself to have transported him into a seventh heaven. On the other hand, he had trouble with his friends. Streuss drew him on one side at Ostend, and talked to him plainly.
"Von Behrling," he said, "I speak to you on behalf of Kahn and myself. Wine and women and pleasure are good things. We two, we love them, perhaps, as you do, but there is a place and a time for them, and it is not now. Our mission is too serious."
"Well, well!" Von Behrling exclaimed impatiently, "what is all this?
What do I do wrong? What have you to say against me? If I talk with Mademoiselle Idiale, it is because it is the natural thing for me to do. Would you have us three--you and Kahn and myself--travel arm in arm and speak never a word to our fellow pa.s.sengers? Would you have us proclaim to all the world that we are on a secret mission, carrying a secret doc.u.ment, to obtain which we have already committed a crime? These are old-fashioned methods, Streuss. It is better that we behave like ordinary mortals. You talk foolishly, Streuss!"
"It is you," the older man declared, "who play the fool, and we will not have it! Mademoiselle Idiale is a Servian and a patriot. She is the friend, too, of Bellamy, the Englishman. She and he were together last night."
"Bellamy is not even on the train," Von Behrling protested. "He went north to Berlin. That itself is the proof that they know nothing. If he had had the merest suspicion, do you not think that he would have stayed with us?"
"Bellamy is very clever," Streuss answered. "There are too many of us to deal with,--he knew that. Mademoiselle Idiale is clever, too. Remember that half the trouble in life has come about through false women.
"What is it that you want?" Von Behrling demanded.
"That you travel the rest of the way with us, and speak no more with Mademoiselle."
Von Behrling drew himself up. After all, it was he who was n.o.ble; Streuss was little more than a policeman.
"I refuse!" he exclaimed. "Let me remind you, Streuss, that I am in charge of this expedition. It was I who planned it. It was I"--he dropped his voice and touched his chest--"who struck the first blow for its success. I think that we need talk no more," he went on. "I welcome your companionship. It makes for strength that we travel together. But for the rest, the enterprise has been mine, the success so far has been mine, and the termination of it shall be mine. Watch me, if you like. Stay with me and see that I am not robbed, if you fear that I am not able to take care of myself, but do not ask me to behave like an idiot."
Von Behrling stepped away quickly. The siren was already blowing from the steamer.
CHAPTER VI
VON BEHRLING IS TEMPTED
The night was dark but fine, and the crossing smooth. Louise, wrapped in furs, abandoned her private cabin directly they had left the harbor, and had a chair placed on the upper deck. Von Behrling found her there, but not before they were nearly half-way across.
She beckoned him to her side. Her eyes glowed at him through the darkness.
"You are not looking after me, my friend," she declared. "By myself I had to find this place."
Von Behrling was ruffled. He was also humbly apologetic.
"It is those idiots who are with me," he said. "All the time they worry."
She laughed and drew him down so that she could whisper in his ear.
"I know what it is," she said. "You have secrets which you are taking to London, and they are afraid of me because I am a Servian.
Tell me, is it not so? Perhaps, even, they think that I am a spy."
Von Behrling hesitated. She drew him closer towards her.