"Forgive me if I have offended you, but I--"
"Ah, sir, but you who live in a powerful country think we little
folk have no hearts, that we have no wrongs to redress, no
dreams of conquest and of power. You are wrong."
"And whose side do you defend?"
"I am a woman," was the equivocal answer.
"Which means that you are uncertain."
"I have long ago made up my mind."
"Wonderful! I always thought a woman's mind was like a time-
table, subject to change without notice. So you have made up
your mind?"
"I was born with its purpose defined," coldly.
"Ah, now I begin to doubt."
"What?" with a still lower degree of warmth.
"That you are a woman. Only goddesses do not change their minds--
sometimes. Well, then you are on the weaker side."
"Or the stronger, since there are two sides."
"And the stronger?" persistently.
"The side which is not the weaker. But the subject is what you
English call 'taboo.' It is treading on delicate ground to talk
politics in the open--especially in Bleiberg."
"What a diplomat you would make!" he cried with enthusiasm.
Certainly this was a red-letter day in his calendar.
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