This large man was happiest when he was tiring himself out.
"Yes; but about Etta?" he said.
And the sound of his voice made Steinmetz wince. There is nothing so
heartrending as the sight of dumb suffering.
"You must see her," answered he reflectively. "You must see her, of
course. She may be able to explain."
He looked across the table beneath his shaggy gray eyebrows. Paul did
not at that moment look a likely subject for explanations--even the
explanations of a beautiful woman. But there was one human quantity
which in all his experience Karl Steinmetz had never successfully
gauged--namely, the extent of a woman's power over the man who loves, or
at one time has loved her.
"She cannot explain away Stepan Lanovitch's ruined life. She can hardly
explain away a thousand deaths from unnatural causes every winter, in
this province alone."
This was what Steinmetz dreaded--justice.
"Give her the opportunity," he said.
Paul was looking out of the window. His singularly firm mouth was still
and quiet--not a mouth for explanations.
"I will, if you like," he said.
"I do like, Paul. I beg of you to do it. And remember that--she is not a
man."
This, like other appeals of the same nature, fell on stony ground. Paul
simply did not understand it. In all the years of his work among the
peasants it is possible that some well-spring of conventional charity
had been dried up--scorched in the glare of burning injustice.
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