her, of the fine things I had heard about her from my friend, and she
listened, letting me go on some time, and exaggerate a little, with her
fine eyes fixed full upon me. "Really?" she suddenly said, turning short
round upon Pickering, who stood behind us, and looking at him in the same
way. "Is that the way you talk about me?"

He blushed to his eyes, and I repented. She suddenly began to laugh; it
was then I observed how sweet her voice was in laughter. We talked after
this of various matters, and in a little while I complimented her on her
excellent English, and asked if she had learnt it in England.

"Heaven forbid!" she cried. "I have never been there and wish never to
go. I should never get on with the--" I wondered what she was going to
say; the fogs, the smoke, or whist with sixpenny stakes?--"I should never
get on," she said, "with the aristocracy! I am a fierce democrat--I am
not ashamed of it. I hold opinions which would make my ancestors turn in
their graves. I was born in the lap of feudalism. I am a daughter of
the crusaders. But I am a revolutionist! I have a passion for
freedom--my idea of happiness is to die on a great barricade! It's to
your great country I should like to go. I should like to see the
wonderful spectacle of a great people free to do everything it chooses,
and yet never doing anything wrong!"

I replied, modestly, that, after all, both our freedom and our good
conduct had their limits, and she turned quickly about and shook her fan
with a dramatic gesture at Pickering. "No matter, no matter!" she cried;
"I should like to see the country which produced that wonderful young
man. I think of it as a sort of Arcadia--a land of the golden age. He's
so delightfully innocent! In this stupid old Germany, if a young man is
innocent he's a fool; he has no brains; he's not a bit interesting. But