Steinmetz paused and glanced at Paul. He could not tell him more. He could not tell him that his wife had sold the Charity League papers to those who wanted them. He could not tell him all that he knew of Etta's past. None of these things could Karl Steinmetz, in the philosophy that was his, tell to the person whom they most concerned. And who are we that we may hold him wrong? The question of telling and withholding is not to be dismissed in a few words. But it seems very certain that there is too much telling, too much speaking out, and too little holding in, in these days of much publicity. There is a school of speakers-out, and would to Heaven they would learn to hold their tongues. There is a school for calling a spade by no other name, and they have still to learn that the world is by no means interested in their clatter of shovels. The Psalmist knew much of which he did not write, and the young men of the modern school of poesy and fiction know no more, but they lack the good taste of the singer of old. That is all. Karl Steinmetz was a man who formed his opinion on the best basis--namely, experience, and that had taught him that a bold reticence does less harm to one's neighbor than a weak volubility. Paul was an easy subject for such treatment. His own method inclined to err on the side of reticence. He gave few confidences and asked none, as is the habit of Englishmen. "Well," he said, "I do not suppose he will stay long at Thors, and I know that he will not stay at all at Osterno. Besides, what harm can he actually do to us? He cannot well go about making enquiries. To begin with, he knows no Russian." "I doubt that," put in Steinmetz. "And, even if he does, he cannot come poking about in Osterno. Catrina will give him no information. Maggie hates him. You and I know him. There is only the countess." "Who will tell him all she knows! She would render that service to a drosky driver." Paul shrugged his shoulders. There was no mention of Etta. They stood side by side, both thinking of her, both looking at her, as she skated with De Chauxville. There lay the danger, and they both knew it. But she was the wife of one of them and their lips were necessarily sealed. "And it will be permitted," Claude de Chauxville happened to be saying at that moment, "that I call and pay my respects to an exiled princess?" "There will be difficulties," answered Etta, in that tone which makes it necessary to protest that difficulties are nothing under some circumstances--the which De Chauxville duly protested with much fervor. "You think that twenty miles of snow would deter me," he said. "Well, they might." "They might if--well--" He left the sentence unfinished--the last resource of the sneak and the coward who wishes to reserve to himself the letter of the denial in the spirit of the meanest lie. CHAPTER XXIV HOME