“As for that, I’ve always heard so.”

“They understand nothing.  Not even warmth.  One is cold in their rooms.”

“As for that—­I mean warmth—­one may say that I understand it; I do.”

“You understand more than warmth.  What is your name?”

“Christine.”

She was the accidental daughter of a daughter of joy.  The mother, as frequently happens in these cases, dreamed of perfect respectability for her child and kept Christine in the country far away in Paris, meaning to provide a good dowry in due course.  At forty-two she had not got the dowry together, nor even begun to get it together, and she was ill.  Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster for Christine.  Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly educated—­for in the affair of Christine’s education the mother had not aimed high enough—­indolent, but economical, affectionate, and with a very great deal of temperament.  Actuated by deep maternal solicitude, she brought her daughter back to Paris, and had her inducted into the profession under the most decent auspices.  At nineteen Christine’s second education was complete.  Most of it the mother had left to others, from a sense of propriety.  But she herself had instructed Christine concerning the five great plagues of the profession.  And also she had adjured her never to drink alcohol save professionally, never to invest in anything save bonds of the City of Paris, never to seek celebrity, which according to the mother meant ultimate ruin, never to mix intimately with other women.  She had expounded the great theory that generosity towards men in small things is always repaid by generosity in big things—­and if it is not the loss is so slight!  And she taught her the fundamental differences between nationalities.  With a Russian you had to eat, drink and listen.  With a German you had to flatter, and yet adroitly insert, “Do not imagine that I am here for the fun of the thing.”  With an Italian you must begin with finance.  With a Frenchman you must discuss finance before it is too late.  With an Englishman you must talk, for he will not, but in no circumstances touch finance until he has mentioned it.  In each case there was a risk, but the risk should be faced.  The course of instruction finished, Christine’s mother had died with a clear conscience and a mind consoled.

Said Christine, conversational, putting the question that lips seemed then to articulate of themselves in obedience to its imperious demand for utterance: 

“How long do you think the war will last?”

The man answered with serenity:  “The war has not begun yet.”

“How English you are!  But all the same, I ask myself whether you would say that if you had seen Belgium.  I came here from Ostend last month.”  The man gazed at her with new vivacious interest.

“So it is like that that you are here!”