An attendant deftly hung von Herrnung’s thin black, sleeveless garment over his broad shoulders, and gave him his white silk wrap and soft crush felt. He slipped a coin into the man’s palm, its small value being instantly reflected in the features of the receiver, and moved towards the swing-doors with Patrine. She said, as a slight block momentarily arrested their progress: "What are they all jabbering about? Who has been assassinated? What has happened at this place with the crack jaw name? ..." "Sarajevo..." came in von Herrnung’s guttural accent. "Sarajevo.... Not that I know where it is," said the deep warm voice, that was more like a young man’s baritone than a young woman’s contralto. And von Herrnung answered, with a renewal of that tingling thrill: "Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia in Eastern Europe. When Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, she made her seat of Government at Sarajevo. The Slavs grumbled. They wished for union with Servia—that little nation of pig-breeders! ... They themselves—the Bosnians—are stupid peasants, _dümmer Teufels!—Schafskopfs_! They cultivate their land with the wooden ploughs that were used at the date of the Trojan War.... But this does not interest you at all, I think?" "How do you know it doesn’t interest me?" "Because dress and jewellery and amusement are the chief things in your life, _gnädiges Fräulein_. You are not even interested in _der Politik_, or in the higher _Kultur_. The social progress of your own country is nothing to you. You are too——" "Too frightfully stupid.... Thanks!" "I did not say too stupid," von Herrnung contradicted. "But if you were stupid, you are too hellishly handsome for that to matter in the least." To be called hellishly handsome pleased her. Her eyes gave him a flashing side-glance. As a surge in the crowd pressed her curving hip against his tall, muscular body, she took his offered arm with a rough, brusque grace. They were near the swing-doors when she spoke: "Tell me about the Sarajevo business.... Who is the official swell the Trojan ploughmen have hoisted—as Lady Beau would say?" "I will tell you. It has happened only this morning——" She felt the man’s powerful muscles thrill and become rigid with suppressed excitement under the hand that rested on his arm. "Two personages of the highest rank have been horribly assassinated. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand, _Kronprinz_ of the Imperial House of Austria, and his wife; you have heard of the _Gräfin_ Sophie Chotek, created Duchess of Hohenberg? Virtually she was _Erzherzogin_—Archduchess—but the wife of the Archduke by a _mariage de la main gauche_. A morganatic marriage—such unions have been heard of in your virtuous England." They had passed the swing-doors now, and mingled, with the crush in the vestibule. Patrine said, signalling with a pair of long black suéde gloves and a vanity-bag of gilded metal chain-mail: