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Updated: June 29, 2025
There was silence for a little while, and Poluski's keen gray eyes still dwelt searchingly on the girl's sorrow laden though resigned features. She did not flinch from the scrutiny, and there was a certain sadness in the Pole's next comment.
But he thought, too, of the fret and fume of Kingship, of the brave men and gracious women who had occupied an unstable throne and were now crumbling to dust in the vaults of that gloomy cathedral. He smiled tenderly at his wife, and his hand stole out to meet hers. "I refuse, Felix!" he said quietly. Poluski's piercing gray eyes peered at him under the shaggy eyebrows. "Is that final?"
Poluski's big gray eyes narrowed into slits, and the hump on his shoulders became more pronounced as his head drooped forward a little; but his smooth tones did not falter, and his uneasy hearer thought he found a note of friendly commiseration in them. "A hard word, Michael, hard and unjust. Joan is no adventuress," he said.
Three large windows commanded a view of the main street, and the solid oak door opened into the corridor behind, which also gave access to the bedrooms. Poluski's only motive in selecting this particular suite was to secure the maximum of privacy. Joan's appearance was far too striking that she should be subjected to the scrutiny of every lounger in the restaurant beneath.
"It is impossible to focus one's thoughts properly on the spoken word when a huge dome adds vibrations of its own, and I admit that I am invariably irritated myself when I state a remarkable fact with the utmost plainness and people pretend to be either deaf or dull of comprehension." That was Poluski's way. He never would take one seriously; but Joan merely sighed and bent her head.
The elderly Frenchwoman whom Joan employed as a compendium of all the domestic virtues was scandalized by the pestering she had already undergone at the hands of the hotel employees. They wanted to know everything about her mistress as soon as they were told that she was not Poluski's wife, and the staid Pauline was at her wit's end to parry the questions showered on her in bad French.
If it had not been for Bosko, the King must have fallen. "Gods!" vowed Drakovitch in his emphatic story to Felix, "there were we lounging about smoking cigarettes while his Majesty was in a fair way to be cut in pieces! A nice state of affairs! If some one had not warned Stampoff, we might have been too late!" "Better not mention it in public," was Poluski's advice.
Poluski's worn face exhibited no more emotion than if he was a graven image, but his voice was sympathetic. "At any rate, everything has ended happily, friend John," said he. "The King is alive, you did your duty, and you will find him not unmindful of your services. By whose order are you detained here?" The excited waiter began to snivel. "I don't know, monsieur.
Both women were too well bred to stare, and Joan instantly brought her wits to bear on Poluski's quip; but that fleeting glimpse had thrilled her with subtle recognition of something grasped yet elusive, of a knowledge that trembled on the lip of discovery, like a half remembered word murmuring in the brain but unable to make itself heard. "Do you ever say what you really mean, Felix?" she asked.
Somehow, Poluski's manner conveyed that this was no elaborate jest, and Joan's lips trembled pitifully when, after one look at the youthful Alec, who was lying on a cushion and saying "Coo-coo" to a rattle, she awaited her husband's reply. He too looked at her in silence, and even Joan became dematerialized for one fateful moment.
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