His reception to me was as perfect as if regulated by a protocol and rehearsed to the last shade. There was nothing in it I could complain of—and yet there was everything. A gentleman ignoring a disgraceful situation of which every one is conscious would have carried himself with just this air of bland and courteous contempt.
Perhaps it was to react against this and to assert myself a little that I ventured once to cross swords with him. We had exhausted the movements of troops on the Rhine, the possible reception of the President in Pans, and he had given the Peace Conference six months in which to prepare the treaty for signature.
"Then we shall see," he laughed, in his rich, velvety bass.
He brought out the statement so emphatically that I was moved to ask:
"What shall we see?"
"What Mrs. Harrowby and I have been talking about, the end of all this rot as to the war having created a new world."
"That's putting the cart before the horse, isn't it?" I asked, maliciously. "The war didn't create the new world; the new world created the war."
Vio's exquisite eyebrows went up a shade.
"Does that mean anything?"
"Only that the volcano creates the explosion; not the explosion the volcano. Given all the repressions and suppressions and injustices, the eruption had to come."