"Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia in Eastern Europe. When Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, she made her seat of Government at Sarajevo. The Slavs grumbled. They wished for union with Servia—that little nation of pig-breeders! ... They themselves—the Bosnians—are stupid peasants, dümmer Teufels!—Schafskopfs! They cultivate their land with the wooden ploughs that were used at the date of the Trojan War.... But this does not interest you at all, I think?"
"How do you know it doesn't interest me?"
"Because dress and jewellery and amusement are the chief things in your life, gnädiges Fräulein. You are not even interested in der Politik, or in the higher Kultur. The social progress of your own country is nothing to you. You are too——"
"Too frightfully stupid.... Thanks!"
"I did not say too stupid," von Herrnung contradicted. "But if you were stupid, you are too hellishly handsome for that to matter in the least."
To be called hellishly handsome pleased her. Her eyes gave him a flashing side-glance. As a surge in the crowd pressed her curving hip against his tall, muscular body, she took his offered arm with a rough, brusque grace. They were near the swing-doors when she spoke:
"Tell me about the Sarajevo business.... Who is the official swell the Trojan ploughmen have hoisted—as Lady Beau would say?"
"I will tell you. It has happened only this morning——"
She felt the man's powerful muscles thrill and become rigid with suppressed excitement under the hand that rested on his arm.
"Two personages of the highest rank have been horribly assassinated. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Kronprinz of the Imperial House of Austria, and his wife; you have heard of the Gräfin Sophie Chotek, created Duchess of Hohenberg? Virtually she was Erzherzogin—Archduchess—but the wife of the Archduke by a mariage de la main gauche. A morganatic marriage—such unions have been heard of in your virtuous England."