XXXII

A LOVE-LETTER

The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski Gardens.  It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the snow had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the garden walks.  The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of the small branches was changing color.  The first hidden movements of spring were assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.

She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.  It is dull work being persistently amiable to one’s elderly relatives.  Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially, perhaps, for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of the world to deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater pleasure of the other half.

She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief experience.  She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps, an additional attention.  She thought it was that, but she was not quite sure.  She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to what she thought of Cartoner.  She was quite sure, however, that he was different from other men.

She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange interview with him had lost sharpness.  But she was conscious of a conviction that he had merely to come again, and he would regain at once the place he had so suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts.  She knew that he was in the background of her mind, as it were, and might come forward at any moment.  She often walked down the Bednarska to the river, and displayed much interest in the breaking up of the ice.

As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.  It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young man dimly suggests a want of interest.  He was so open and frank that there was really no mystery whatever about him.  And Netty rather liked a mystery.  Of course it was most interesting that he should be a prince.  Even Aunt Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after speaking of the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant.  It was a great pity that the Bukatys were so poor.  Netty gave a little sigh when she thought of their poverty.

In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand.  She did not count Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough when he chose to be.  Netty walked backward and forward down the broad walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered why Martin was so long in coming.  For the chance meetings had