Both the others seemed surprised.
"I wish it were, Mr Belke!" said Miss Burnett with a sudden and moving change to seriousness.
"Then if it is not, why are we pretending so religiously that we have no business here but to drink tea, Miss Burnett?"
"I am not pretending; I am drinking it," she smiled.
"Yes, yes," I said, "but you know what I mean. It seems to me so un-German!"
They both looked at me rather hard.
"I'm afraid," said Miss Burnett, "that we of the secret service grow terribly cosmopolitan. Our habits are those of no country—or rather of all countries."
"I had almost forgotten," said Tiel, "that I once thought and felt like Mr Belke." And then he added this singular opinion: "It is Germany's greatest calamity—greater even than the coming in of Britain against her, or the Battle of the Marne—that those who guide her destinies have not forgotten it too."
"What do you mean?" I demanded, a little indignantly I must own.
"At every tea-party for many years Germany has talked about what interested herself—and that was chiefly war. At no tea-party has she tried to learn the thoughts and interests of the other guests. In consequence she does not yet understand the forces against her, why they act as they do, and how strong they are. But her enemies understand too well."