“I am sure they are merely terrified. We are not accustomed to reporters, interviewers, to an avalanche of invitations from people we don’t know. It is enough to terrify any one; and being a shy race—not having had your liberal education!—we shrink into a sort of panoply of war. We don’t go over meaning to be rude, but we are driven to appear so rather than show our fright and look ridiculous. One of my cousins visited the United States a year or two ago, just after he came into his title, and he was so hounded by reporters and lion hunters, that after doubling and dodging until he was worn out, he gave himself the airs of a stage lord and succeeded in freezing them off. Then the journalists wrote vicious articles calling him a snob—It would seem that like a good many others, they do not know exactly what that word means. And Jim is as decent a little chap as you could find in England.”
“Well, you misjudge us too. You are always commiserating the American husbands left at home to coin dollars while their wives swarm over Europe. If you only knew how delighted the American husband is to get rid of his wife for a few months out of the year! But come, let us go in. I know that you long for an easy chair and to see your cigarette smoke, while I dare not sit out too late. Who is not a slave of some sort?”
XXII PRINCESS NACHMEISTER AS GUARDIAN ANGEL
He graduated from the easy chair to the divan by imperceptible degrees, for he had arts of his own; and in the course of a month of well-nigh daily intercourse he was almost as much at home in the villa by the Isar as Styr herself. Insensibly he began to assume airs of ownership, which made Margarethe wonder how her sense of humour had hitherto survived with so little to feed upon. He never gave her a sentimental glance, nor, not even when they talked till two in the morning and he left by the tower window in Kilchberg’s boat, did he in any way manifest a desire to make love to her. Nevertheless, it was quite evident that he had drifted into the assumption that the great prima donna, from whom no other man in Europe could claim more than a bow, or a few meaningless phrases at a rout, existed for him alone; that her time, her mind, her affections, were his; that, putting the attitude into the American nutshell, he owned her. And yet, while his bearing was a mixture of the husband, the friend, the lover, and the spoilt child, it was all on the mental plane; nor did he ever lose a certain formality, which indeed was so integral a part of his birthright that no intimacy of his would ever descend into the too dangerous places of familiarity.