“Pros’t!” Kreisler answered with alarming suddenness, and an alarming diabolical smile. “Prosit!” with finality. He put his glass down. “That is all right. I have no _desire_,” he wiped and struck up his moustaches, “to _quarrel_ with anybody. I wish to be left alone. That is all.” “To be left alone to enjoy your friendship with Bertha—that is your meaning? Am I not right? I see.” “That is my business. I wish to be left _alone_.” “Of course it’s your business, my dear chap. Have another drink!” He called the _garçon_. Kreisler agreed to another drink. Why was this Englishman sitting there and talking to him? It was in the German style and yet it wasn’t. Was Kreisler to be shifted, was he meant to go? Had the task of doing this been put on Bertha’s shoulders? Had Tarr come there to ask him, or in the hope that he would volunteer a promise, never to see Bertha again? On the other hand, was he being approached by Tarr in the capacity of an old friend of Bertha’s, or in her interests or at her instigation? With frowning impatience he bent forward quickly once or twice, asking Tarr to repeat some remark. Tarr’s German was not good. Several glasses of beer, and Kreisler became engagingly expansive. “Have you ever been to England?” Tarr asked him. “England?—No—I should like to go there! I like Englishmen! I feel I should get on better with them than with these French. I hate the French! They are all actors.” “You should go to London.” “Ah, to London. Yes, I should go to London! It must be a wonderful town! I have often meant to go there. Is it expensive?” “The journey?” “Well, life there. Dearer than it is here, I have been told.” Kreisler forgot his circumstances for the moment. The Englishman seemed to have hit on a means of escape for him. He had never thought of England! A hazy notion of its untold wealth made it easier for him to put aside momentarily the fact of his tottering finances. Perhaps this Englishman had been sent him by the _Schicksal_. He had always got on well with Englishmen! The peculiar notion then crossed his mind that Tarr perhaps wanted _to get him out of Paris_, and had come to make him some offer of hospitality in England. In a bargaining spirit he began to run England down. He must not appear too anxious to go there. “They say, though, things have changed. England’s not what it was,” he said. “No. But it has changed for the better.” “I don’t believe it!” “Quite true. The last time I was there it had improved so much that I thought of stopping. Merry England is _foutu_! There won’t be a regular Pub. in the whole country in fifty years. Art will flourish! There’s not a _real_ gipsy left in the country. The sham art-ones are dwindling!” “Are the _Zigeuner_ disappearing?” “Je vous crois! Rather!” “The only Englishmen I know are very _sympathisch_.” They pottered about on the subject of England for some time. Kreisler was very tickled with the idea of England.