“No, you wouldn’t, Steinmetz,” answered Alexis, with a vexed laugh. “You would hate it just as much as I do, especially if it meant running away from the best bear-shooting in Europe.”
Steinmetz shrugged his shoulders.
“Then you should not have been charitable—charity, I tell you, Alexis, covers no sins in this country.”
“Who made me charitable? Besides, no decent-minded fellow could be anything else here. Who told me of the League of Charity, I should like to know? Who put me into it? Who aroused my pity for these poor beggars? Who but a stout German cynic called Steinmetz?”
“Stout, yes—cynic, if you will—German, no!”
The words were jerked out of him by the galloping horse.
“Then what are you?”
Steinmetz looked straight in front of him, with a meditation in his quiet eyes which made a dreamy man of him.
“That depends.”
Alexis laughed.