“When you have finished,” said Wanda, “you can talk of your affairs. I shall leave you to yourselves.” “Oh, there is not much to say,” answered Kosmaroff. “I have done no good on my journey. Things make no progress.” “You expect too much,” said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. “You expect the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy, remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks. You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going forward for five years, and then falling through, after all.” Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry--not, as many do, to pass the time. “One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now,” he said. “In fact, it is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her also. But, please, do not stand,” he added, turning to her. “I have all I want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king--or a beggar.” His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal. “It is,” he said, after a pause, “about that Englishman, Cartoner.” Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on Kosmaroff's sudden appearance at the door. “Yes,” she said, in a steady voice. “He knows more than it is safe to know--safe for us--or for himself. One evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a pity, perhaps, that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects the lives and happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the life of one. This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate concern in it----” He stopped, and looked at the prince. “But I have also no power,” he added, “over those whose affair it is--you understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study the attitude of the European powers, our--well, I suppose I may say--our foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to us--they were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words--and who are our enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the foreign powers know. It seems they must know something. It seems that Cartoner--knows everything. So it is reported in Cracow.” The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh. “In Cracow,” he said, “they are all words.”