ancient pleasantry as if it were a sudden inspiration. He made a cheerful thing, an echo of the platform before the booth of a country fair, even of a visit to the tomb of the pater patriae. It is enshrined in a kind of grotto in the grounds, and Vogelstein remarked to Pandora that he was a good man for the place, but was too familiar. 'Oh he'd have been familiar with Washington,' said the girl with the bright dryness with which she often uttered amusing things. Vogelstein looked at her a moment, and it came over him, as he smiled, that she herself probably wouldn't have been abashed even by the hero with whom history has taken fewest liberties. 'You look as if you could hardly believe that,' Pandora went on. 'You Germans are always in such awe of great people.' And it occurred to her critic that perhaps after all Washington would have liked her manner, which was wonderfully fresh and natural. The man with the beard was an ideal minister to American shrines; he played on the curiosity of his little band with the touch of a master, drawing them at the right moment away to see the classic ice-house where the old lady had been found weeping in the belief it was Washington's grave. While this monument was under inspection our interesting couple had the house to themselves, and they spent some time on a pretty terrace where certain windows of the second floor opened--a little rootless verandah which overhung, in a manner, obliquely, all the magnificence of the view; the immense sweep of the river, the artistic plantations, the last-century garden with its big box hedges and remains of old espaliers. They lingered here for nearly half an hour, and it was in this retirement that Vogelstein enjoyed the only approach to intimate conversation appointed for him, as was to appear, with a young woman in whom he had been unable to persuade himself that he was not absorbed. It's not necessary, and it's not possible, that I should reproduce this colloquy; but I may mention that it began--as they leaned against the parapet of the terrace and heard the cheerful voice of the showman wafted up to them from a distance--with his saying to her rather abruptly that he couldn't make out why they hadn't had more talk together when they crossed the Atlantic.
'Well, I can if you can't,' said Pandora. 'I'd have talked quick enough if you had spoken to me. I spoke to you first.'
'Yes, I remember that'--and it affected him awkwardly.
'You listened too much to Mrs. Dangerfield.'
He feigned a vagueness. 'To Mrs. Dangerfield?'
'That woman you were always sitting with; she told you not to speak to me. I've seen her in New York; she speaks to me now herself. She recommended you to have nothing to do with me.'
'Oh how can you say such dreadful things?' Count Otto cried with a very becoming blush.
'You know you can't deny it. You weren't attracted by my family. They're charming people when you know them. I don't have a better time anywhere than I have at home,' the girl went on loyally. 'But what does it matter? My family are very happy. They're getting quite used to New York. Mrs. Dangerfield's a vulgar wretch--next winter she'll call on me.'
'You are unlike any Madchen I've ever seen--I don't understand you,' said poor Vogelstein with the colour still in his face.
'Well, you never WILL understand me--probably; but what difference does it make?'
He attempted to tell her what difference, but I've no space to follow him here. It's known that when the German mind attempts to explain things it doesn't always reduce them to simplicity, and Pandora was first mystified, then amused, by some of the Count's revelations. At last I think she was a little frightened, for she remarked irrelevantly, with some decision, that luncheon would be ready and that they ought to join Mrs. Steuben. Her companion walked slowly, on purpose, as they left the house together, for he knew the pang of a vague sense that he was losing her.
'And shall you be in Washington many days yet?' he appealed as they went.
'It will all depend. I'm expecting important news. What I shall do will be influenced by that.'
The way she talked about expecting news--and important!--made him feel somehow that she had a career, that she was active and independent, so that he could scarcely hope to stop her as she passed. It was certainly true that he had never seen any girl like her. It would have occurred to him that the news she was expecting might have reference to the favour she had begged of the President, if he hadn't already made up his mind--in the calm of meditation after that talk with the Bonnycastles--that this favour must be a pleasantry. What she had said to him had a discouraging, a somewhat chilling effect; nevertheless it was not without a certain ardour that he inquired of her whether, so long as she stayed in Washington, he mightn't pay her certain respectful attentions.
'As many as you like--and as respectful ones; but you won't keep them up for ever!'
'You try to torment me,' said Count Otto.
She waited to explain. 'I mean that I may have some of my family.'
'I shall be delighted to see them again.'
Again she just hung fire. 'There are some you've never seen.'
In the afternoon, returning to Washington on the steamer, Vogelstein received a warning. It came from Mrs. Bonnycastle and constituted, oddly enough, the second juncture at which an officious female friend had, while sociably afloat with him, advised him on the subject of Pandora Day.
'There's one thing we forgot to tell you the other night about the self-made girl,'
said the lady of infinite mirth. 'It's never safe to fix your affections on her, because she has almost always an impediment somewhere in the background.'
He looked at her askance, but smiled and said: 'I should understand your information--for which I'm so much obliged--a little better if I knew what you mean by an impediment.'
'Oh I mean she's always engaged to some young man who belongs to her earlier phase.'
'Her earlier phase?'
'The time before she had made herself--when she lived unconscious of her powers. A young man from Utica, say. They usually have to wait; he's probably in a store. It's a long engagement.'
Count Otto somehow preferred to understand as little as possible. 'Do you mean a betrothal--to take effect?'
'I don't mean anything German and moonstruck. I mean that piece of peculiarly American enterprise a premature engagement--to take effect, but too complacently, at the end of time.'
Vogelstein very properly reflected that it was no use his having entered the diplomatic career if he weren't able
