e foreign men?" was the girl's next apparently irrelevant
question.

But by this time Miss Adams had begun to have a faint suspicion of what
might be at the end of her companion's confession. For in the past two
weeks since Polly's, Betty's and Esther's visit to the German forest,
she too had become interested in some of its consequences. Yet she
answered with entire truthfulness:

"Why, of course, Polly child, I like foreign men. Why should not one? It
is absurd and prejudiced to like or dislike a person because of his
nationality; it is the man's own character that counts."

"Oh, yes, I know that is what one should feel and say. I don't mean to
be rude," Polly added quickly, blushing over her fatal habit of saying
whatever was uppermost in her mind. "I was just wondering whether it was
actually true. Don't most of us really in the end like best the kind of
people and life to which we have been accustomed. Now, for example, just
suppose that we take a girl who has been brought up in the United States
almost all her life, where she has had boy acquaintances and friends
whom she has known in a simple, intimate way, without thinking of any
one of them seriously. Then bring her to a foreign country, take
Germany, just when she is about grown. All of a sudden imagine a young
fellow turning up entirely unlike her old boy friends, handsome,
charming and behaving as though he were falling in love with her. Do you
believe that the girl could honestly care for him? Don't you think that
it would just be a mistaken fancy on her part and that some day when she
grew older she would want her old friends and associations again. Why,
she might even meet one of her former acquaintances and find that she
liked him best, because after all he was also an American and thought
about life and women and lots of other things more in the way that she
did."

Margaret Adams covered both ears with her hands. "My dear Polly," she
began, "if you think I have imagination enough to follow all those
supposings and all those mixed-up sentences and ideas, you must consider
me cleverer than I am. But as long as I happen to be able to guess whom
you are talking about, don't you think we might be straightforward. We
will never speak of it to any one else, nor to each other if it seems
wiser not. But of course you mean----"

"Betty!" finished Polly. And then sighing profoundly: "You see, ever
since our meeting in the woods the other day with Carl von Reu