"You're so beastly impatient!" said Gardiner, with a laugh. He waited to light a cigarette, cherishing it between his palms, and then jerking the match with a quick gesture across the road. "I've been searching for my ideal; you wouldn't have me hurry over that, would you? I've tried the Canaries, and I've tried Austrylier, and I've tried England, and they're all vanity and vexation of spirit. But I think I've got the real thing at last."
"Where?"
"On the Semois. You never heard of it? Quite. Nobody has. The Semois is a river, a ravishing river who ties herself into complicated knots round forest-covered mountains. On the map she looks like a bedivvled corkscrew. I don't know where the charm lies—I've seen fifty places more conventionally beautiful, but I tell you, Denis, I've got that river in my bones! Figure to yourself a young mountain, with the river plumb before it, in a gorge. You look down into that gorge, and beyond it over the tops of hills and hills and hills, range behind range, getting bluer, and dimmer, and blurrier, till they're a mere wash of cobalt against the sky—"
"Hills—!" said Denis. "I've asked you: where is this place?"
"The Ardennes. Belgian Luxemburg. Close to the French frontier and twenty miles from Sedan."
"Well, I suppose you know your own business best," said Denis for the second time—it was plain he supposed nothing of the kind—"but I'd not settle there if you paid me."
"Why on earth not? Oh ah, of course! the German menace, isn't it? Well, if they come, I shall suffer with my adopted country, that's all."
"If you'd spent a year in Germany, as I have, and seen what I did, you'd not laugh," said Denis, patiently and obstinately. The German danger was one of his hobbies. It was surprising that, with so many hoary prejudices, he should ever have taken up with a new-fangled science like aeronautics; but who is consistent?
"I'm not laughing, my dear chap. You know more about it than I do, and if you say it's on the cards I believe you. But they're not coming to-day, are they? and mañana es otro día. Meanwhile I go ahead with my Bellevue (that's to be the name of it: beautifully banal, what?) and trust to luck. It hasn't served me badly so far. Besides, I don't stand to lose much. I like money all right, but I'm not a slave to that or anything else. If I lose every penny to-morrow I shouldn't put myself about—except for daddy's sake; and after all he's not actually dependent on me, I only supply the amenities. Yes; bar accidents, I can pretty well defy Fate."
He stretched himself complacently, as if rejoicing in his freedom. Denis preserved silence.