"
"I suppose I shall," admitted Paul.
"And Catrina will find you out at once."
"Why?"
Steinmetz drew in his feet. He leant forward and knocked his pipe on one
of the logs that lay ready to light in the great open fire-place.
"Because she loves you," he said shortly. "There is no coming the Moscow
doctor over her, mien lieber."
Paul laughed rather awkwardly. He was one of the few men--daily growing
fewer--who hold that a woman's love is not a thing to be tossed lightly
about in conversation.
"Then--" he began, speaking rather quickly, as if afraid that Steinmetz
was going to say more. "If," he amended, "you think she will find out,
she must not see me, that is all."
Steinmetz reflected again. He was unusually grave over this matter. One
would scarcely have taken this stout German for a person of any
sentiment whatever. Nevertheless he would have liked Paul to marry
Catrina Lanovitch in preference to Etta Sydney Bamborough, merely
because he thought that the former loved him, while he felt sure that
the latter did not. So much for the sentimental point of view--a
starting-point, by the way, which usually makes all the difference in a
man's life. For a man needs to be loved as much as a woman needs it.
From the practical point of view, Karl Steinmetz knew too much about
Etta to place entire reliance on the goodness of her motives.
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