“Gracious Lady,
“This will reach you at the stage-door of the opera, and by then I shall be away on the sea, on my return to Germany.
“You will wonder why, having agreed to accept your gratifying proposal to drive down to Grote alone with you, I have in the lurch left you, and why I put you to the trouble of going down at so inconvenient an hour to the opera, when you would find nobody. The reasons are three:
“The first is that I wish for ever to cast off the dust and the dirt of your disagreeable land, and to do it in as inconvenient and humiliating a manner as possible. Believing, as I do, that before but a few weeks are out we good Germans will be sinking your ships, and would be battering into pulp your armies, if you had any, I take permission to declare my hostility, before the rest of my nation, and get safe back to my beloved Fatherland before I suffer outrage in your barbarous country.
“Secondly, I leave you to find out that I have gone without telling you before I am safe away, since I feel sure you would make the scenes, and try to induce me to stop, at least for the satisfaction of your amiable purposes. But a scene with one who is quite indifferent to me lacks all excitement, and is merely a bore. I therefore escape a scene with you, via the Hook of Holland.
“Thirdly, you have often told me that the pleasantest thing in an experience is the anticipation of it. I therefore have taken the opportunity to lengthen your anticipation out to its utmost possible limits. I hope you have had two charming days.
“If further justification for my action was necessary, which it is not, it would lie in the fact that when I accepted your invitation to Grote, I had not quite made up my mind. I did so a few hours afterwards, when I decided I would sooner spend Sunday in Germany than with you. I shall sleep better in my German bed. You have been most useful to me in my stay in England, and the use you have been to me, and your pleasant hospitality and the English gold I so plentifully carry away with me, I consider are the proper tribute to a great artist. I honour you by allowing myself to accept these offerings. I need not speak about your own personal feeling for me, for no man of true Kultur willingly alludes to his triumphs, however unsought. I need only say that the continued existence of your husband, your nationality, and my own disinclination prevent my making you into an honest woman. With regard to my sudden departure, I need but say that I trust the hospitable Sir Gurtner’s judgment more than that of our German Ambassador.
“Finally, gracious lady, I have met many women more beautiful than yourself, but none more facile. Your friends disagree with me about the standard of your beauty, but they are of my mind regarding your facility. Pray do not think I state these facts from the desire to insult gratuitously; I base my statements on the ground of the instinct of one of England’s bitterest foes.
“Friedrich Kuhlmann.”
Helen Grote took up the little speaking trumpet, and put the light out.