the way.

But John saw the angry flash in the eyes of the Prussian die suddenly
like a light put out by a puff of wind, and the compressed line of the
lips relax. He knew that it was not the result of innate feeling, but of
a mental effort made by von Boehlen, and he surmised that the fact of
his being a foreigner had all to do with it. Yet he waited for the other
to apologize first.

"Pardon," said the captain, "it is somewhat dark here, and as I was
absorbed in thought. I did not notice you."

His English was excellent and his manner polite enough. John could do
nothing less than respond in kind.

"It was perhaps my fault more than yours," he said.

The face of Captain von Boehlen relaxed yet further into a smile.

"You are an American," he said, "a member of an amiable race, our
welcome guests in Europe. What could our hotels and museums do without
you?"

When he smiled he showed splendid white teeth, sharp and powerful. His
manner, too, had become compelling. John could not now deny its charm.
Perhaps his first estimate of Captain von Boehlen had been wrong.

"It is true that we come in shoals," he responded. "Sometimes I'm not
sure whether we're welcome to the general population."

"Oh, yes, you are. The Americans are the spoiled children of Europe."

"At least we are the children of Europe. The people on both sides of the
Atlantic are apt to forget that. We're transplanted Europeans. The
Indians are the only people of the original American stock."

"But you are not Europeans. One can always tell the difference. You
speak English, but you are not English. I should never take an American
for an Englishman."

"But our basis is British. Despite all the infusions of other bloods,
and they've been large, Great Britain is our mother country. I feel it
myself."

Von Boehlen smiled tranquilly.

"Great Britain has always been your chief enemy," he said. "You have
been at war with her twice, and in your civil war, when you were in dire
straits her predominant classes not only wished for your destruction,
but did what they could to achieve it."

"Old deeds," said John. "The bad things of fifty or a hundred years ago
are dead and buried."

But the Prussian would not have it so. Germany, he said, was the chief
friend of America. Their peoples, he insisted, were united not only by a
tie of blood, but by points of view, similar in so many important cases.
He seemed for some inscrutable reason anxious to convin