"What a pity you're not fond of the stage!" she sighed, with a world of regret in her very blue eyes. "You might have a theatre of your own, and a leading lady, and all the rest of it."
"It sounds rather fascinating," he admitted, "under certain circumstances. All the same, I don't think I should like to make a business of what is such a great pleasure."
"I thought, with American men," she said archly, "that their business was their pleasure."
"To a certain extent, I suppose," he admitted, "but then, you see, I am half English. My mother was English although she was married in America, and I was born there."
"How did you manage about serving?" she enquired.
"I gave both a turn," he explained. "I turned out for England first and then for America."
"How splendid of you!" she murmured, raising her fine eyes admiringly and then dropping them in a most effective manner. "But wasn't it a shocking waste of time and lives! Just fancy, in all those years, how many undeveloped geniuses must have been killed without ever having had their chance! How miserably upside down the whole world was, too! Four years and more during which a supper party, except at a private house, was an impossibility!"
"I suppose," Wingate admitted, a little staggered, "that taken from that point of view the war was an unfortunate infliction."
"And after all," the young lady went on, "here we are at the end of it very much as though it had never happened. Do you think they will be able to stop wars in the future?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "I suppose international differences must be settled somehow or other. Personally, I think a wrestling match, or something of that sort—"