He had never considered the possibility that she might love Paul.

Was this, after all, jealousy?
He had attributed it to vanity.
"And I have no doubt he is right," she went on.

Suddenly she gave a little laugh.

"Don't you understand ?" she said.

"I want to be friends." She did not look at him, but sat with pouting lips holding out her hand.
Karl Steinmetz had been up to the elbows, as it were, in the diplomacy of an unscrupulous, grasping age ever since his college days.