"My godson," he said, "as yet we have scarcely spoken of this
great surprise which you have given us--of Paul Fiske. All that
I shall say now is this. I am very proud to know that he is my
guest to-night. I am very happy to think that from tomorrow we
shall be fellow workers."
Catherine, while she waited for her tea in the Carlton lounge on
the following afternoon, gazed through the drooping palms which
sheltered the somewhat secluded table at which she was seated upon
a very brilliant scene. It was just five o'clock, and a packed
crowd of fashionable Londoners was listening to the strains of a
popular band, or as much of it as could be heard above the din of
conversation.
"This is all rather amazing, is it not?" she remarked to her
companion.
The latter, an attache at a neutral Embassy, dropped his eyeglass
and polished it with a silk handkerchief, in the corner of which
was embroidered a somewhat conspicuous coronet.
"It makes an interesting study," he declared. "Berlin now is
madly gay, Paris decorous and sober. It remains with London to be
normal,--London because its hide is the thickest, its sensibility
the least acute, its selfishness the most profound."
Catherine reflected for a moment.
"I think," she said, "that a philosophical history of the war will
some day, for those who come after us, be extraordinarily
interesting. I mean the study of the national temperaments as
they were before, as they are now during the war, and as they will
be afterwards.
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