"Are you an individualist?" he asked.
"Not fundamentally," she replied, "but I am caught up in the throes of a great reaction. I have been studying events, which it is quite true may change the destinies of the world, so intently that I have almost forgotten that, after all, the greatest thing in the world, my world, is the happiness or ill-content of Naida Karetsky. It is really of more importance to me to-day that my quail should be cooked as I like it than that England has let go her last rope."
"You are not an Englishwoman," he reminded her.
"That is of minor importance. We are all so much immersed in great affairs just now that we forget it is the small ones that count. I want my luncheon to be perfect, I want you to seem as nice to me as I have fancied you, and I want you to chase completely away the idea that you are cultivating my acquaintance for interested motives."
"That I can assure you from the bottom of my heart is not the case," he replied. "Whatever other interests I may feel in you," he added, after a moment's hesitation, "my first and foremost is a personal one."
She looked at him with gratitude in her eyes for his understanding.
"A woman in my position," she complained, "is out of place. A man ought to come over and study your deservings or your undeservings and pore over the problem of the future of Europe. I am a woman, and I am not big enough. I am too physical. I have forgotten how to enjoy myself, and I love pleasure. Now am I a revelation to you?"
"You have always been that," he told her. "You are so truthful yourself," he went on boldly, "that I shall run the risk of saying the most banal thing in the world, just because it happens to be the truth. I have felt for you since our first meeting what I have felt for no other woman in the world."
"I like that, and I am glad you said it," she declared lightly enough, although her lips quivered for a moment. "And they have put exactly the right quantity of Maraschino in my grapefruit. I feel that I am on the way to happiness. I am going to enjoy my luncheon.—Tell me about Maggie."
"I saw her yesterday," he answered. "We have arranged for her to come and live at Belgrave Square, after all."