"But you aren't a So . . ." Tietjens said: "Of course, if your father came from Constantinople and his mother was a Georgian, it accounts for your attractiveness. You _are_ a most handsome fellow. And intelligent. . . . If the general has put you on to inquire whether I am a Socialist I will answer your questions." Levin said: "No. . . . That's one of the questions he's reserving for himself to ask. It appears that if you answer that you are a Socialist he intends to cut you out of his will. . . ." Tietjens said: "His will! . . . Oh, yes, of course, he might very well leave me something. But doesn't that supply rather a motive for me to say that I _am_? I don't want his money." Levin positively jumped a step backwards. Money, and particularly money that came by way of inheritance, being one of the sacred things of life for him, he exclaimed: "I don't see that you _can_ joke about such a subject!" Tietjens answered good-humouredly: "Well, you don't expect me to play up to the old gentleman in order to get his poor old shekels." He added "Hadn't we better get it over?" Levin said: "You've got hold of yourself?" Tietjens answered: "Pretty well. . . . You'll excuse my having been emotional so far. You aren't English, so it won't have embarrassed you." Levin exclaimed in an outraged manner: "Hang it, I'm English to the backbone! What's the matter with me?" Tietjens said: "Nothing. . . . Nothing in the world. That's just what makes you un-English. We're all . . . well, it doesn't matter what's wrong with _us_. . . . What did you gather about my relations with Miss Wannop?" The question was so unemotionally put and Levin was still so concerned as to his origins that he did not at first grasp what Tietjens had said. He began to protest that he had been educated at Winchester and Magdalen. Then he exclaimed, "_Oh_!" And took time for reflection. "If," he said finally, "the general had not let out that she was young and attractive . . . at least, I suppose attractive . . . I should have thought that you regarded her as an old maid. . . . You know, of course, that it came to me as a shock, the thought that there was anyone. . . . That you had allowed yourself . . . Anyhow . . . I suppose I'm simple. . . ." Tietjens said: "What did the general gather?" "He . . ." Levin said, "he stood over you with his head held to one side, looking rather cunning . . . like a magpie listening at a hole it's dropped a nut into. . . . First he looked disappointed: then quite glad. A simple kind of gladness. Just glad, you know. . . . When we got outside the hut he said 'I suppose in _vino veritas_,' and then he asked me the Latin for 'sleep' . . . But I had forgotten it too. . . ." Tietjens said: "What did I say?"