"They do when the people are willing that they should. At present the popular mind is pretty well where it was fifty years ago. Look at the reputation you bear in Berlin. Why? Because you have made an instrument which allows the German to kill his enemies as he has never been killing them before." "You are saying, vat?" asked the baroness, impatient of neglect. "You are telling Mister Faber to kill ze enemies?" "Of his own sex, madame," retorted Trevelle immediately. "Then he is not like ze Spanish king, who do not kill his enemy because he have killed him already. I should be afraid of this friend of yours; he have nothing but killing in his mind--he live to kill, is it not so?" "Oh!" said Trevelle, "you must ask the ladies about that." The baroness shook her head. "We was all to go to the Alcazar to see the Russian dancers. Why do we stay? I am all hot. I would get far from here--all hot, and yet they say dat in England is joost one good big cold, so cold dat ze nose is freeze off the face. Shall we go to dance, Mr. Trevelle?" Trevelle said, "Certainly." He had heard of the terrible winter they were having in England, and was glad not to be in London. "The Thames will be frozen right over," he told them, "the first time since the beginning of the nineteenth century. I suppose there is something in this story of the weakening of the Gulf Stream after two years of drought over yonder. Anyway, it's extraordinary. I wonder what would happen if the Channel froze----?" "Ah!" said Faber, "a good many people would wonder then, and some of them would be in Berlin. I don't think Sir Jules's stock would stand very high if that happened, Mr. Trevelle." "But you think it quite impossible?" "Which is to say that I dictate to Nature. Well, I don't think I should do that at my time of life."