Von Klausen shrugged.
"I go where I am sent," said he.
"Would you ever go to war?" she persisted.
"If I had to. Why not?"
"And fight?"
"Dear lady, but yes. I do not like, though, to fight, for war is what one of your great generals said: it is Hell."
"Yet you went into the army?"
"Because all my family have for generations done thus. I was born for that, I was brought up for that, and when I came to know"—he extended his palms—"I had to live," he concluded.
This was scarcely Muriel's ideal of a soldier. She changed the conversation.
"Of course you know Europe perfectly?" she enquired.