"It is his manner only which is against him." They found a comfortable table, and she sat smiling at him across the white cloth.
"If this is not Sachers," she said, "it is at least more pleasant than lunching alone." "I can assure you, Mademoiselle," he declared, with a vigorous twirl of his moustache, "that I find it so." "Always gallant," she murmured.

"Tell me, is it true of you--the news which I heard just before I left Vienna?
Have you really resigned your post with the Chancellor ?" "You heard that ?" he asked slowly.
She hesitated for a moment.
"I heard something of the sort," she admitted.

"To be quite candid with you, I think it was reported that the Chancellor was making a change on his own account." "So that is what they say, is it?
What do they know about it--these gossipers ?" "You were not allowed at the conference yesterday," she remarked.
"No one was allowed there, so that goes for nothing." "Ah! well," she said, looking meditatively out upon the landscape, "a year ago the thought of that conference would have driven me wild.

I should not have been content until I had learned somehow or other what had transpired.

Lately, I am afraid, my interest in my country seems to have grown a trifle cold.