circulation, but using it this time as an indication of how little it
mattered whether his facts were right or wrong. Some one once said to him
curiously, 'Don't you _care_ that you are misleading so many millions?'
To which he replied, in his dry little voice, 'I don't lead, or mislead,
the millions. They lead me.' Little Pinkerton sometimes saw a long way
farther into what he was doing than you'd guess from his shoddy press. He
had queer flashes of genius.

But Hobart hadn't. Hobart didn't see anything, except what he was
officially paid to see. A shallow, solemn ass.

I looked suddenly at Jane, and caught her watching her husband silently,
with her considering, dispassionate look. He was talking to the American
Legation about the traffic strike (we were a round table, and the talk
was general).

Then I knew that, whether Jane had ever been in love with Hobart or not,
she was not so now. I knew further, or thought I knew, that she saw him
precisely as I did.

Of course she didn't. His beauty came in--it always does, between men and
women, confusing the issues--and her special relation to him, and a
hundred other things. The relation between husband and wife is too close
and too complex for clear thinking. It seems always to lead either to too
much regard or to an excess of irritation, and often to both.

Jane looked away from Hobart, and met my eyes watching her. Her
expression didn't alter, nor, probably, did mine. But something passed
between us; some unacknowledged mutual understanding held us together for
an instant. It was unconscious on Jane's part and involuntary on mine.
She hadn't meant to think over her husband with me; I hadn't meant to
push in. Jane wasn't loyal, and I wasn't well-bred, but we neither of us
meant that.

I hardly talked to Jane that evening. She was talking after dinner to
Katherine and the American Legation. I had a three-cornered conversation
with Hobart and the Legation's wife, who was of an inquiring turn of
mind, like all of her race, and asked us exhausting questions. She got on
to the Jewish question, and asked us for our views on the reasons for
anti-Semitism in Europe.

'I've been reading the _New Witness_,' she said.

I told her she couldn't do better, if she was investigating
anti-Semitism.

'But are they fair?' she asked ingenuously.

I replied that there were moments in which I had a horrible suspicion
that they were.

'Then the Jews are really a huge conspiracy