"You shall have," Felix said quietly, "my promise. A greater power than the threat of your English police has tied my hands; for the present I have abandoned my purpose."
"I am bound to believe you," Wolfenden said, "and you look as though you were speaking the truth; yet you must forgive my asking why, in that case, you are following the man about? You must have a motive."
"As it happened," he said, "I am here by the merest accident. It may seem strange to you, but it is perfectly true. I have just come out of Waldorf's, above there, and I saw you all three upon the pavement."
"More glad," Felix said, "than I was to see you with them. Can you not believe what I tell you? shall I give you proof? will you be convinced then? Every moment you spend with that man is an evil one for you. You may have thought me inclined to be melodramatic last night. Perhaps I was! All the same the man is a fiend. Will you not be warned? I tell you that he is a fiend."
"Perhaps he is," Wolfenden said indifferently. "I am not interested in him."
"But you are interested--in his companion."
"I think," he said, "that we will leave the lady out of the conversation."
"You are a good fellow," he said; "but, forgive me, like all your countrymen, you carry chivalry just a thought too far--even to simplicity. You do not understand such people and their ways."
Wolfenden was getting angry, but he held himself in check.
"You know nothing against her," he said slowly.
"It is true," Felix answered. "I know nothing against her. It is not necessary. She is his creature. That is apparent. The shadow of his wickedness is enough."
Wolfenden checked himself in the middle of a hot reply. He was suddenly conscious of the absurdity of losing his temper in the open street with a man so obviously ill-balanced--possessed, too, of such strange and wild impulses.
"Let us talk," he said, "of something else, or say good-morning. Which way were you going?"
"To the Russian Embassy," Felix said, "I have some work to do this afternoon."
"Our ways, then, are the same for a short distance," he said. "Let us walk together. Forgive me, but you are really, then, attached to the Embassy?"
Felix nodded, and glanced at his companion with a smile.