‘Will you tell me something, Mr. Sybert?’
‘I am at your service,’ he bowed.
‘And the truth?’
‘Oh, certainly, the truth.’
She glanced down in her lap a moment and smoothed the fingers of her gloves in a thoughtful silence. ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I don’t know, after all, what I want to ask you; but there is something in the air that I don’t understand. Tell me the truth about Italy.’
‘The truth about Italy?’ He repeated the words with a slight accent of surprise.
‘Last week in Rome, at the Roystons’ hotel, everybody was talking about the wheat famine and the bread riots, and they all stopped suddenly when I asked any questions. Uncle Howard will never tell me a thing; he just jokes about it when I ask him.’
‘He’s afraid,’ said Sybert. ‘No one dares to tell the truth in Italy; it’s lèse majesté.’
She glanced up at him quickly to see what he meant. His face was quite grave, but there was a disagreeable suggestion of a smile about his lips. She looked out of doors again with an angry light in her eyes. ‘Oh, I think you are beastly!’ she cried. ‘You and Uncle Howard both act as if I were ten years old. I don’t think that a wheat famine is any subject to joke about.’
‘Miss Marcia,’ he said quietly, ‘when things get to a certain point, if you wish to keep your senses you can’t do anything but joke about them.’