She raised her eyebrows but her air of offence was obviously assumed. She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke for a minute. He was absorbed in the study of her hands—her unusually firm yet delicate fingers, ringless save for one large, quaintly-cut emerald.
'In my life,' she said, 'I have no confidants.'
'That seems a pity,' he replied. 'We might be useful to one another.'
'I am not so sure,' she answered thoughtfully. 'For instance, although we speak together in English, my soul is French. I am for France and France only. England is our very dear ally. England is a splendid and an honourable nation, but it is France's future welfare in which I am concerned, and not England's. You, on the other hand, are Saxon. England and America, after all, are very close together.'
'Greatest mistake of your life,' he assured her. 'I have a great respect for England and a great liking for English people, and I believe that she was dragged into this war without wanting it, but, on the other hand, as I told you once before, I am for America and America only. England has asked for what she is getting for a good many years. If even she gets a good hiding it won't do her any harm.'
'But America is so far outside,' she observed.
'Don't you make any mistake,' he answered promptly. 'The world grows smaller, year by year. The America of fifty years ago has become impossible to-day. We have our political interests in every country, and, however slow and unwilling we may be to take up our responsibilities, we've got to come into line with the other great Powers and use the same methods.'
'You may be right,' she confessed. 'Very well, then, you are for America and I am for France. Now tell me, as between Germany and England how are your sympathies?'
'With England, without a doubt,' he pronounced. 'Mind, I am not a rabid anti-German. I am not in the least sure that a nation with the great genius for progress that Germany has shown is not to some extent justified by taking up the sword to hew a larger place in the world for her own people. But that does not affect my answer to your question. My sympathies are with England.'
She flicked the ash from her cigarette. She was looking a little languidly across the room towards a table set against the wall.