“And what do you know?” he asked.
“I will tell you. It happened this afternoon. I was having tea with Robin, feeling tremendously English, and then some boy who was having tea with us said something about Germany being crushed between Russia and France. And I had spoken before I knew I had spoken, and found that I had said that not all the armies of Europe could stand against Germany. It—it flared out, like flame when you strike a dull brown head of a match against a dull brown strip on the side of its box. I couldn’t bear anyone to talk of Germany like that.”
“But, dearest, you must keep a guard on yourself,” said he. “You are too impulsive. Remember, you have great English sympathies as well. Your home is here, your friends are here, you have boys who will go to Eton.”
She began to get voluble and excited, as she always did when anyone hinted that she was not completely wise and admirable and marvellous.
“I know, and it’s just that which makes it so difficult for me,” she said, “and you don’t consider for a moment what terrible anguish I shall suffer. Apart from me and the children, there is no one in the world that you care for as I care for hundreds of my friends. You don’t love people as I do, Hermann; but I am too affectionate. Of course it is my fault, I ought to be colder and less tender-hearted, but I am made like that. And I love Germany, too, in a way that you have no conception of. You are taken up with your money-getting, and you don’t care where it comes from, so long as you know where it goes to. Sometimes I think we made a mistake: we ought to have gone away when Kuhlmann went. It was my affection for my home and my friends, which you now throw in my teeth, that kept me from dreaming of going.”
“I throw nothing in your teeth,” said he. “But I do tell you to keep a guard on yourself.”
“And that is very unkind of you,” said she, scaling up the heights of egoism. “You ought to sympathize with me, instead of scolding me. It makes me miserable to think of what may be coming. I do not know what I have done that such unhappiness should be sent me. Just when everything was going so well, and the children were strong and healthy, and I was making so many friends.”
“Ah, enough, enough,” said he impatiently, “it is just that sort of talk of the struggle in your tender heart which you must utterly avoid. And there must be no more matches struck, Aline: there is too much inflammable material about. There! Do not cry, I beg you. You know very well I am not unkind.”
They had come into the Italian hall, and her eyes fell on the sables which reposed on one of the cassoni. The effort of realizing that he was not unkind was much mitigated by the sight....
There followed the hour which, apart from great social triumphs, she loved almost best in all the day. The three boys had already had their baths, and clad in their brilliant wool-and-silk pyjamas were careering about the night-nursery in a wild romp before going to bed. But the moment she appeared they all ran to her, and Freddy sat on her right knee, and Bertie on her left, and Jackie squeezed himself somehow in between. They had, so it was shrilly announced, already said their prayers to Nanna, so that tiresome business being over, there was nothing but sheer enjoyment for as long as Mummie would stop. She often thought what a divine picture could be made of her sitting half-submerged in this beloved wave of children, but she could not think of any living artist capable of doing justice to the exquisite theme....