"Not in the least," the girl caught him up. "Not about the alone part, I should say. Maybe I am fidgety and sort of worried about making good on the job. This is my first trip--my very first as a buyer for Hildebrand. And, of course, if I should fall down----" "Fall down?" Woodhouse echoed, mystified. The girl laughed, and struck her left wrist a smart blow with her gloved right hand. "There I go again--slang; 'vulgar American slang,' you'll call it. If I could only rattle off the French as easily as I do New Yorkese I'd be a wonder. I mean I'm afraid I won't make good." "Oh!" "But why should I worry about coming over alone?" Jane urged. "Lots of American girls come over here alone with an American flag pinned to their shirt-waists and wearing a Baedeker for a wrist watch. Nothing ever happens to them." Captain Woodhouse looked out on the flying panorama of straw-thatched houses and fields heavy with green grain. He seemed to be balancing words. He glanced at the passenger across the aisle, a wizened little man, asleep. In a lowered voice he began: "A woman alone--over here on the Continent at this time; why, I very much fear she will have great difficulties when the--ah--trouble comes." "Trouble?" Jane's eyes were questioning. "I do not wish to be an alarmist, Miss Gerson," Captain Woodhouse continued, hesitant. "Goodness knows we've had enough calamity shouters among the Unionists at home. But have you considered what you would do--how you would get back to America in case of--war?" The last word was almost a whisper. "War?" she echoed. "Why, you don't mean all this talk in the papers is----" "Is serious, yes," Woodhouse answered quietly. "Very serious." "Why, Captain Woodhouse, I thought you had war talk every summer over here just as our papers are filled each spring with gossip about how Tesreau is going to jump to the Feds, or the Yanks are going to be sold. It's your regular midsummer outdoor sport over here, this stirring up the animals." Woodhouse smiled, though his gray eyes were filled with something not mirth. "I fear the animals are--stirred, as you say, too far this time," he resumed. "The assassination of the Archduke Ferd----" "Yes, I remember I did read something about that in the papers at home. But archdukes and kings have been killed before, and no war came of it. In Mexico they murder a president before he has a chance to send out 'At home' cards." "Europe is so different from Mexico," her companion continued, the lines of his face deepening. "I am afraid you over in the States do not know the dangerous politics here; you are so far away; you should thank God for that. You are not in a land where one man--or two or three--may say, 'We will now go to war,' and then you go, willy-nilly."