CHAPTER XVIII.
The Baron Hellman, comfortably seated at the brilliantly decorated round dining table, between Catherine, on one side, and a lady to whom he had not been introduced, contemplated the menu through his immovable eyeglass with satisfaction, unfolded his napkin, and continued the conversation with his hostess, a few places away, which the announcement of dinner had interrupted.
"You are quite right, Princess," he admitted.
"The position of neutrals, especially in the diplomatic world, becomes, in the case of a war like this, most difficult and sometimes embarrassing.

To preserve a correct attitude is often a severe strain upon one's self-restraint." The Princess nodded sympathetically.
"A very charming young man, the Baron," she confided to the General who had taken her in to dinner.

"I knew his father and his uncle quite well, in those happy days before the war, when one used to move from country to country." "Diplomatic type of features," the General remarked, who hated all foreigners.

"It's rather bad luck on them," he went on, with bland insularity, "that the men of the European neutrals--Dutch, Danish, Norwegians or Swedes--all resemble Germans so much more than Englishmen." The Baron turned towards Catherine and ventured upon a whispered compliment.

She was wearing a wonderful pre-war dress of black velvet, close-fitting yet nowhere cramping her naturally delightful figure.