'I don't mind anything. I don't mind your being technically German a scrap. All I think is that it was a little--well, perhaps a little excessive to marry another German when you had done it once already. But then I'm always rather on the side of frugality. I do definitely prefer the few instead of the many and the little instead of the much.' 'In husbands as well?' 'Well yes--I think so.' Dolly sighed. 'I wish I had been like that,' she said. 'It would have saved poor Kitty so much.' She dropped the currants she held in her hands slowly bunch by bunch into the basket. 'But I don't see,' I said, 'what difference it could make to Kitty. I mean, once you had started having German husbands at all, what did it matter one more or less? And wasn't the second one d--I mean, hadn't he left off being alive when the war began? So I don't see what difference it could make to Kitty.' 'But that's just what you've got to realise,' said Dolly, letting the last bunch of currants drop out of her hand into the basket. She looked at me, and I became aware that she was slowly turning red. A very delicate flush was slowly spreading over her face, so delicate that for a moment I didn't see what it was that was making her look more and more guilty, more and more like a child who has got to confess--but an honourable, good child, determined that it _will_ confess. 'You know,' she said, 'that I've lived in Germany for years and years.' 'Yes,' I said. 'I've guessed that.' 'And it's different from England.' 'Yes,' I said. 'So I understand.' 'The way they see things. Their laws.' 'Yes,' I said. Dolly was finding it difficult to say what she had to say. I thought it might help her if I didn't look at her, so I once more began to pick currants. She mechanically followed my example. 'Kitty,' she said, as we both stooped busily over the same bush, 'thinks what I did too dreadful. So did all our English relations. It's because you may think so too that I've got to tell you. Then you can decide whether you really want me here or not.' 'Dear Dolly,' I murmured, 'don't please make my blood run cold--' 'Ah, but it's forbidden in the Prayer Book.' 'What is?' 'What I did.' '_What_ did you do, Dolly?' I asked, now thoroughly uneasy; had her recklessness gone so far as to lead her to tamper with the Commandments? Dolly tore off currants and leaves in handfuls and flung them together into the basket. 'I married my uncle,' she said. 'What?' I said, really astonished.