served besides Paris?"

"I am thirty years old," he replied. "I started at Bukarest. From there
I went to Rome. Then I was second attaché at Paris, and finally, as you
see, here."

"And your people--they are English, of course?"

"Naturally," he answered. "My mother died when I was quite young, and my
father when I was at Eton. I have an estate in Hampshire which seems to
get on very well without me."

"And you really care about your profession? You have the real feeling for
diplomacy?"

"I think there is nothing else like it in the world," he assured her.

"You may well say that," she agreed enthusiastically. "I think you might
almost add that there has been no time in the history of Europe so
fraught with possibilities, so fascinating to study, as the present."

He looked at her keenly. It is the first instinct of a young diplomatist
to draw in his horns when a beautiful young woman confesses herself
interested in his profession.

"You, too, think of these things, then?" he remarked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"But naturally! What is there to do for a woman but think? We cannot act,