"Really!"
"Really and truly, I have become what you wanted me to become, a very earnest person indeed, and some day people may even take to buying my pictures."
"I never quite know when you are in earnest, Cuthbert; but if it is true it is very good news. Do you mean that you are really studying?"
"I am indeed. I work at the studio of one M. Goudé, and if you choose to inquire, you will find he is perhaps the best master in Paris. I am afraid the Prussians are going to interrupt my studies a good deal. This has made me angry and I have enlisted—that is to say, been sworn in as a member of the Chasseurs des Écoles, which most of the students at Goudé's have joined."
"What! You are going to fight against the Germans!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "You never can mean it, Cuthbert."
"I mean it, I can assure you," he said, amused at her indignation. "I suppose you are almost Germanized, and regard their war against the French as a just and holy cause."
"Certainly I do," she said, "though of course, I should not say so here. I am in France and living in a French family, and naturally I would say nothing that would hurt the feelings of the people round me, but there can be no doubt that the French deserve all the misfortunes that have fallen upon them. They would have invaded Germany, and all these poor young Germans have been torn away from their friends and families to fight."
"So have these young Frenchmen. To my mind the war was deliberately forced upon France, but I think we had better agree to differ on this subject. You have been among Germans and it is not unnatural that you should have accepted their version. I have been living among Frenchmen, and although I do not say that it would not have been much wiser if they had avoided falling into the pit dug for them, my sympathies are wholly with them, except in this outburst of folly that has resulted in the establishment, for a time at any rate, of a Republic. Now, I have no sympathy whatever with Republics, still less for a Republic controlled by political adventurers, and like many Frenchmen I am going to fight for France, and in no way for the Republic. At any rate let us agree to avoid the subject altogether. We shall never convince each other however much we might argue it over."
The girl was silent for two or three minutes, and then said—
"Well, we will agree not to quarrel over it. I don't know how it is that we always see things so differently, Cuthbert. However, we may talk about your doings without arguing over the cause. Of course you do not suppose there will be much fighting—a week or two will see the end of it all."