“Telling Mrs. Emily wouldn't be quite the same as giving him up, would it?”
“But we promised him solemnly that we wouldn't tell a soul!”
“Yes, but we didn't give him permission to go and make use of our friends.”
A complicated problem in ethics, and in etiquette too! They discussed it back and forth, without getting very far. Lanny said that Mrs. Emily had expressed herself strongly against the blockade of Germany; she would, no doubt, be deeply sympathetic to what Kurt was doing, even while she might disapprove his methods.
The mother replied: “Yes, but don't you see that if you tell her you make her responsible for the methods. As it is, she's just a rich American lady who's been deceived by a German agent. She's perfectly innocent, and she can say so. But if she knows, it's her duty to report him to the authorities, and she's responsible for what may happen from now on.”
Lanny sat with knitted brows. “Don't forget,” he remarked, “you're in that position yourself. It ought to worry you.”
Said Beauty: “The difference is that I'd be willing to lie about it; but I don't believe Emily would.”
IV
When in doubt, do nothing — that seemed to be the wise rule. They had no way to communicate with Kurt, and he didn't make any move to enlighten them. Was he arguing the same way as Beauty, that what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them? It was obvious that in trying to promote pro-German ideas among highly placed persons in Paris he was playing a desperately dangerous game, and the fewer dealings he had with friends the better for the friends.
Many ladies in fashionable society become amateur psychologists, and learn to manipulate one another's minds and to extract information without the other person's knowing what they are after — unless, perchance, the other person has also become an amateur psychologist. Beauty went to see her friend in the morning; and of course it was natural for her to refer to the handsome young pianist, to comment on his skill, and to ask where her friend had come upon him. Emily explained that M. Dalcroze had written that he was a cousin of an old friend in Switzerland who had died several years ago, and that he had come to Paris to study with one of the great masters at the conservatory.