'Our young friend and I,' he remarked, 'were hanging over the side of a steamer, looking out for submarines, this time yesterday. Not particularly good for the appetite, that sort of thing.'
'I think it is very brave of you to have really crossed the North Sea,' Suzanne declared. 'I should have been terrified to death.'
'Business is business,' Mr. Kessner observed, 'and I am something of a fatalist myself. I go about what I have to do and take my chances. Same with Mr. Lavendale, I expect, only these diplomatists are used to it. Troublous times, Miss de Freyne, times such as I never dreamed we should see in our days. By the by, are you French or English?'
'French, English, and Austrian,' she told him, smiling, as they took their places at the table, 'so you see I represent neutrality in my own person. My grandmother was Austrian, and I have never been so happy as when I lived in Vienna.'
He nodded approvingly.
'Do you know,' he said, 'I am glad you are not altogether English. I don't know which way your sympathies may be in this trouble, and I don't know as it matters. We each of us have a right to our feelings, whatever they may be. I am an American first and foremost, like our friend here, only he has British blood in his veins behind it, and I have German. We can keep good friends for all that, though.'
'I think,' she sighed, 'that I am in a most trying position. I adore Austria and I have many relations there. I am very fond of France and I have some good friends in England. I am torn every way. After all, though,' she went on reflectively, 'it cannot be as hard for me as for you. You really are German, are you not, and yet you have to sit still and see America doing an enormous lot to help the Allies.'
He glanced at her keenly. Her sincerity was undoubted. Before he replied he looked also at the occupants of the next two tables, young people from the land of musical comedy with their khaki-clad escorts, intellectually negligible. Nevertheless, he lowered his voice a little as he answered.
'You are quite right, Miss de Freyne. It is one of the hardest nuts we have to crack, we German-Americans. We are honest and above-board about it, you see. We have worked like slaves to direct the policy of America our own way, and we've failed.'
'Is there nothing more you can do?' she asked earnestly.