"Not at all," said I. "You can always go upstairs to bed, Thusis."
Angry tears glittered in her eyes, not quenching their dangerous brightness, however. But I was now as mad as she was.
"Do you suppose," said I, "that this world war, this overwhelming disaster that is razing hill and city to one horrible and bloody level—this cataclysm which is obliterating the very contours of the world God made—is not also going to level such flimsy structures as the social structure?—such artificial protuberances as elevation of rank? I tell you, Thusis, that mankind will emerge naked and equal from this blood-deluge. You and I, too, are going to come out of it—if we do come out—not what our ancestors thought they were, but what we actually are! Very possibly, in generations gone with buried years, some doddering potentate may have managed to beget some ancestor of yours.
"What of it? Who cares to-day?—outside of the Huns and their barbarian allies? Who cares what you call yourself, I say? Who in God's name will care to-morrow? Do you imagine that the peoples who, like Christ, have descended into hell, can come out of those flames without the tinsel of rank being burned off? Do you suppose anything can remain except pure metal?"
I had let myself loose; and I fairly took away her breath.
She put out one hand and rested it on the bannisters in a dazed sort of way, still looking at me with a kind of fixed fascination.
"Have you any answer to what I have said?" I added after the silence had been sufficiently impressive.
She said faintly: "How about the Admiral, Don Michael?" And, as I choked and turned crimson, the girl turned, dropped onto the stairs, and rocked there convulsively, stifling her helpless, hysterical laughter with both hands over her lips.
I waited, hot with exasperation. There was nothing else for me to do.
Thusis struggled fiercely with her uncontrollable mirth, evidently terrified lest the indiscretion of her laughter awake the sleepers in the house.