“You are right,” Immelan assented.  “My sympathies are on the other side.”

There was a lull in the game for a moment or two.  The sun was troublesome, and the players were changing courts.  Naida turned towards her companion thoughtfully.

“My friend,” she said, glancing around as though to be sure that they were not overheard, “there are times when you move me to wonder.  In the small things as well as the large, you are so unchanging.  I think that you would see an Englishman die, whether he were your friend or your enemy, very much as you kick a poisonous snake out of your path.”

“It is quite true,” was the calm reply.

“But America was once your enemy,” she continued, watching Chalmers’ powerful service.

“With America we made peace,” he explained.  “With England, never.  If you would really appreciate and understand the reason for that undying hatred which I and millions of my fellow countrymen feel, it will cost you exactly one shilling.  Go to any stationer’s and buy a copy of the Treaty of Versailles.  Read it word by word and line by line.  It is the most brutal document that was ever printed.  It will help you to understand.”

She nodded slowly.

“Paul always declared,” she said, “that in those days England had no statesmen—­no one who could feel what lay beyond the day-by-day horizon.  When I think of that Treaty, my friend, I sympathise with you.  It is not a great thing to forge chains of hate for a beaten enemy.”

“If you realise this, are you not then our friend?” Immelan asked.

She appeared for a few moments to be engrossed in the tennis.  Her companion, however, waited for her answer.

“In a way,” she acknowledged, “I find something magnificent in your wonderfully conceived plans for vengeance, and in the spirit which has evolved and kept them alive through all these years.  Then, on the other hand, I look at home, and I ask myself whether you do not make what they would call over here a cat’s-paw of my country.”

“Ours is the most natural and most beneficial of all possible alliances,” Immelan insisted.  “Germany and Russia, hand in hand, can dominate the world.”

“I am not sure that it is an equal bargain, though, which you seek to drive with us,” she said.  “Germany aims, of course, at world power, but you are still fettered by the terms of that Treaty.  You cannot build a great fleet of warships or aeroplanes; you cannot train great armies; you cannot lay up for yourselves all the store that is necessary for a successful war.  So you bring your brains to Russia, and you ask us to do these things; but Russia does not aim at world power.  Russia seeks only for a great era of self-development.  She, too, has a mighty neighbour at her gates.  I am not sure that your bargain is a fair one.”

“It is the first time that I have heard you talk like this,” Immelan declared, with a little tremor in his tone.