“Yes, thank you,” replied Cartoner, lightly.  He seemed, too, to be gay this morning.

“Don’t thank me—­thank the gods,” replied Deulin, with a sudden gravity.

“Well,” said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, “what do you want?”

Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.

“What do I want?” he inquired, innocently.

“Yes.  You want something.  I always know when you want something.  When you are most idle you are most occupied.”

“Ah!”

Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.

“There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking towards the Column—­the shady side, after the street has been watered—­that my soul desires,” said the Frenchman, at length.

“When are you going?” asked Cartoner, softly.

“I am not going; I wish I were.  I thought I was last night.  I thought I had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on indefinitely for——­”

“For what?”

“For the upheaval,” explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his cigarette.

“This morning—­” he began.  And then he waited for Cartoner to lay aside his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful attention which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and had his being.  Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.

“This morning I picked up a scrap of information.”  He drew towards him a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin.  The design was made in three strokes.  It was not unlike a Greek cross, Deulin threw the paper across the table.

“You know that man?”

“I do not know his name,” replied Cartoner.

“No; no one knows that,” replied Deulin.  “It is one of the very few mysteries of the nineteenth century.  All the others are cleared up.”

Cartoner made no answer.  He sat looking at the design, thinking, perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was still content to be known only by a mark.

“Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors which, happily, have never reached the newspaper,” said Deulin, after a pause.  “One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an upheaval.  But the upheaval does not come.  That has been the status quo for many years here.  Suppose—­suppose, my friend, that they manufacture their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as to the creating of an opportunity.”

“Anarchy?” inquired Cartoner.

“The ladies of the party call it Nihilism,” replied the Frenchman, with an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to gainsay a lady.

“Bukaty would not stoop to that.  Remember they are a patient people.  They waited thirty years.”

“And struck too hastily, after all,” commented Deulin.  “Bukaty would not link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little.  But there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to wait longer, and are therefore less patient—­men of a more modern stamp, without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough in their way.  It may not be a gentlemanly way—­”