For the capacity for evil merges at some
point or other into incapability for comprehending good.
"Is that all he knows?" she was wondering.
The suggestion that Sydney Bamborough was not dead had risen up to
eclipse all other fear in her mind. In some part her thought reached
him.
"I know so much," he said, "that it is safest to tell me more. I offered
you my friendship because I think that no woman could carry through your
difficulties unaided. Princess, the admiration of Claude de Chauxville
may be pleasant, but I venture to think that my friendship is
essential."
Etta raised her head a little. She was within an ace of handing over to
Karl Steinmetz the rod of power held over her by the Frenchman. There
was something in Steinmetz that appealed to her and softened her,
something that reached a tender part of her heart through the coating of
vanity, through the hardness of worldly experience.
"I have known De Chauxville twenty-five years," he went on, and Etta
deferred her confession. "We have never been good friends, I admit. I am
no saint, princess, but De Chauxville is a villain. Some day you may
discover, when it is too late, that it would have been for Paul's
happiness, for your happiness, for every one's good to have nothing more
to do with Claude de Chauxville, I want to save you that discovery.
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