Her lips parted in a dazzling smile. The bluest eyes in the world grew softer as they looked into his. Von Behrling felt his cheeks burn.
"My friend, it is not so easy," she murmured. "Tell me," she continued, "why it is that you have so little self-confidence. Is it because you are poor?"
"I am a beggar,"--bitterly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Well," she said, glancing down the menu which the waiter had brought, "if you are poor and content to remain so, one must presume that you have compensations."
"But I have none!" he declared. "You should know that--you, Mademoiselle. Life for me means one thing and one thing only!"
She looked at him, for a moment, and down upon the tablecloth. Von Behrling shook like a man in the throes of some great passion.
"We talk too intimately," she whispered, as the people began to file in to take their places. "After luncheon we will take our coffee in my coupe. Then, if you like, we will speak of these matters. I have a headache. Will you order me some champagne? It is a terrible thing, I know, to drink wine in the morning, but when one travels, what can one do? Here come your bodyguard. They look at me as though I had stolen you away. Remember we take our coffee together afterwards. I am bored with so much traveling, and I look to you to amuse me."
Von Behrling's journey was, after all, marked with sharp contrasts. The kindness of the woman whom he adored was sufficient in itself to have transported him into a seventh heaven. On the other hand, he had trouble with his friends. Streuss drew him on one side at Ostend, and talked to him plainly.
"Von Behrling," he said, "I speak to you on behalf of Kahn and myself. Wine and women and pleasure are good things. We two, we love them, perhaps, as you do, but there is a place and a time for them, and it is not now. Our mission is too serious."
"Well, well!" Von Behrling exclaimed impatiently, "what is all this? What do I do wrong? What have you to say against me? If I talk with Mademoiselle Idiale, it is because it is the natural thing for me to do. Would you have us three--you and Kahn and myself--travel arm in arm and speak never a word to our fellow passengers? Would you have us proclaim to all the world that we are on a secret mission, carrying a secret document, to obtain which we have already committed a crime? These are old-fashioned methods, Streuss. It is better that we behave like ordinary mortals. You talk foolishly, Streuss!"