“Ah! well,” she said, looking meditatively out upon the landscape, “a year ago the thought of that conference would have driven me wild. I should not have been content until I had learned somehow or other what had transpired. Lately, I am afraid, my interest in my country seems to have grown a trifle cold. Perhaps because I have lived in Vienna I have learned to look at things from your point of view. Then, too, the world is a selfish place, and our own little careers are, after all, the most important part of it.”
“It seems strange to hear you talk like this,” he remarked.
She looked out of the window for a moment.
“Oh! I still love my country, in a way,” she answered, “and I still hate all Austrians, in a way, but it is not as it used to be with me, I must admit. If we had two lives, I would give one to my country and keep one for myself. Since we have only one, I am afraid, after all, that I am human, and I want to taste some of its pleasures.”
“Some of its pleasures,” Von Behrling repeated, a little gloomily. “Ah, that is easy enough for you, Mademoiselle!”
“Not so easy as it may appear,” she answered. “One needs many things to get the best out of life. One needs wealth and one needs love, and one needs them while one is young, while one can enjoy.”
“It is true,” Von Behrling admitted,—“quite true.”
“If one is not careful,” she continued, “one lets the years slip by. They can never come again. If one does not live while one is young, there is no other chance.”
Von Behrling assented with renewed gloom. He was twenty-five years old, and his income barely paid for his uniforms. Of late, this fact had materially interfered with his enjoyments.
“It is strange,” he said, “that you should talk like this. You have the world at your feet, Mademoiselle. You have only to throw the handkerchief.”
Her lips parted in a dazzling smile. The bluest eyes in the world grew softer as they looked into his. Von Behrling felt his cheeks burn.
“My friend, it is not so easy,” she murmured. “Tell me,” she continued, “why it is that you have so little self-confidence. Is it because you are poor?”
“Well,” she said, glancing down the menu which the waiter had brought, “if you are poor and content to remain so, one must presume that you have compensations.”