“You! You’re much too tall.” “If you thought me a boy I should seem much shorter,” she returned composedly. “Do you mind telling me how you came to stand up as you did?” “I always do when they play my national anthem. Do not you?” The “do not you” gave the young man the clue to her speech, to the slightly exotic quality of it. It was less the accent than the clear precision of her use of words, without the slur or contraction of common usage. The charm of her soft and rather deep voice saved it from any taint of the pedantic. “No,” said he. “Ah? But perhaps you are not an American.” “What else should I be?” She shrugged her shoulders slightly. “Nor do I,” put in Magnus Laurens, “I’m ashamed to say.” “At all events, you did it this time. It was very nice in you. Usually I feel quite lonely. And once they were going to arrest me for it.” “Where was that?” asked Jeremy Robson stealthily reaching for his folded square of scratch paper. “In Germany. When I was at school there. Are you going to put all this in the paper?” “Would you mind?” “I suppose I ought to mind. It is very forward and unmaidenly, is it not, to permit one’s self to be dragged into print?” “It is,” said Magnus Laurens, his shrewd eyes twinkling, “and about one hundred and one maidens out of every hundred just love it, according to my observations.” “I do not think that I should object,” said Miss Ames calmly. “In fact I should be curious to see what you would say about me.” That was Jeremy Robson’s first intimation of her unique frankness of attitude toward herself as toward all other persons and things. “We are on our way to the hotel where Mrs. Laurens is waiting for us,” explained the water-power dictator. “Why not walk along with us while you conclude the interview?” “I have n’t much more to ask Miss Ames,” said the reporter, complying, “except what started her on her patriotic habit.” “My father was an army officer,” she explained. “While he was alive we always stood up together. Now I could no more sit through ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ than you would wear your hat in church. But I really do not see anything to write about in _that_. There was much, surely, more interesting at the meeting.” “What, for instance?” “The whole affair,” she said vaguely. “It seemed to me strange. What are so many German subjects doing over here?” “Those aren’t German subjects, my dear,” said Mr. Laurens. “They’re American citizens, mostly.” “Surely not!” exclaimed the girl. “The German flags, and the pictures of the Emperor, and all the talk about the German spirit, and--and ‘Deutschland über alles.’ From _Americans?_” “Certainly,” said the reporter. “And good ones.” “I should think they would better be called good Germans. One cannot imagine that sort of thing occurring in a German city. I mean if the case were reversed, and Americans wanted to hold such a meeting.” “No? What would happen?”