“My dear Anna,” she said, “I am not so serious a person as you are.  I am profoundly, incomprehensibly selfish.  The only human being in the whole world for whom I have had a spark of real affection is Maurice, and I adore him.  What he has told me to do, I have done.  What makes him happy makes me happy.  For his sake, even, I have forgotten and shall always forget that I was born an Englishwoman.  Circumstances, too,” she went on thoughtfully, “have made it so easy.  England is such a changed country.  When I was a child, I could read of the times when our kings really ruled, of our battles for dominion, of our fight for colonies, of our building up a great empire, and I could feel just a little thrill.  I can’t now.  We have gone ahead of Napoleon.  From a nation of shop-keepers we have become a nation of general dealers—­a fat, over-confident, bourgeois people.  Socialism has its hand upon the throat of the classes.  Park Lane, where our aristocracy lived, is filled with the mansions of South African Jews, whom one must meet here or keep out of society altogether.  Our country houses have gone the same way.  Our Court set is dowdy, dull to a degree, and common in a different fashion.  You are right.  I have lost my love for England, partly because of my marriage, partly because of those things which have come to England herself.”

For the first time there was a little flush of colour in Anna’s exquisitely pale cheeks.  There was even animation in her tone as she turned towards her friend.

“Mildred,” she exclaimed, “it is splendid to hear you say what is really in your mind!  I am so glad you have spoken to me like this.  I feel these things, too.  Now I am not nearly so English as you.  My mother was English and my father Austrian.  Therefore, only half of me should be English.  Yet, although I am so much further removed from England than you are, I have suddenly felt a return of all my old affection for her.”

“You are going to tell me why?” her companion begged.

“Of course!  It is because I believe—­it is too ridiculous—­but I believe that I am in your position with the circumstances reversed.  I am beginning to care in the most foolish way for an unmistakable Englishman.”

“If we had missed this little chance of conversation,” the Princess declared, “I should have been miserable for the rest of my life!  There is the Duke hanging about behind.  For heaven’s sake, don’t turn.  Thank goodness he has gone away!  Now go on, dear.  Tell me about him at once.  I can’t imagine who it may be.  I have watched you with so many men, and I know quite well, so long as that little curl is at the corner of your lips, that they none of them count.  Do I know him?”

“I do not think so,” Anna replied.  “He is not a very important person.”

“It isn’t the man you were dining with in the Cafe de Berlin when Prince Karl came in?”

“Yes, it is he!”

The Princess made a little grimace.