And they rose and sauntered away in search of entertainment, leaving Cynthia Charterhouse drawing out von Herrnung, who seemed in a particularly arrogant mood. Did he like England and London especially? Did he find English women as nice, generally, as the friends he had left at home?
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"Nice.... One is charmed with English ladies!" declared von Herrnung. "So tall, willowy, and elegant, so independent of manner, and so amiably ready to make a stranger feel at home! True, they have not the plumpness and repose of our German ladies ... at the theatres especially they are rather thin than otherwise.... But they have gehen and chic"—he showed his white teeth—"and change is a delightful thing!"
Patrine, silent in her settee-corner, wondered whether Trixie Wastwood and Cynthia Charterhouse knew that he was insulting them?
"Change from a fat woman to a thin one, is that what you mean?" asked Mrs. Charterhouse. She added: "I'm so glad we strike you as having lots of go. Perhaps it's a result of our being given to exercise, that general effect of slimness you mention. But if German women don't walk, or ride, or skate, or fence, or swim, they do dance a great deal."
"They dance a great deal, yes!" agreed von Herrnung. "One might say they are passionately devoted to it. Dancing is also one of the chief joys of a German officer's life—when he has handsome partners to choose amongst!" He added: "When one is young, and the blood runs hot in the veins, what more glowing pleasures can Life offer, than to ride a noble horse, to drink glorious wine, or to dance all night with a beautiful woman, to the sound of music voluptuous and exquisite!"
Patrine, behind the shelter of a copy of the Pall Mall Gazette, was shuddering uncontrollably. Her life seemed driven back from the extremities to centre about her heart. In that and in her brain were glowing cores of fire. All else was ice, rigid and heavy and cold.
"Dear me!" came plaintively from Mrs. Charterhouse. She signalled with her eyebrows to Lady Wastwood and continued, as the diaphanous Trixie came drifting to her assistance: "Really, I shall have to seek a delightful change by going to Germany. I'd quite forgotten how different you are! The way you talk about your blood, and all that. It's simply too awfully interesting! Trixie, you've got to listen to this!"
"I need no telling, I assure you. I have been drinking in Count von Herrnung's eloquence at every pore," affirmed Trixie. She added: "Like you I have been deeply intrigued by his descriptions of his countrymen. So, so different from our poor creatures, who don't drink glorious wine because they funk gouty complications, and leave their noble horses eating their heads off in loose-boxes while they're scorching about the country in racing-cars. And as for dancing all night—" She shrugged her frail shoulders, and elevated her Pierrot eyebrows beneath the veil that tightly swathed her white triangular face.
"Doesn't it fire you to go to Germany?" gushed Mrs. Charterhouse. "Why"—she demanded, raising her fine eyes to the genuine Adam ceiling—"why can't my husband get a post in the Berlin Diplomatic, instead of stupid old Petersburg? One never dreamed Germans could be so interesting before!"