"Oh, not like this!" I paused. "You know, Hugh, Serbia is a wonderful little country when you've heard a bit of its story." "Is it?" He took out a cigarette and lit it. In the ardor of my sympathy I poured out on him some of the information I had just acquired. "And we're all responsible," I was finishing; "English, French, Russians, Austrians--" "We're not responsible--we Americans," he broke in, quietly. "Oh, I'm not so sure about that. If you inherit the civilization of the races from which you spring you inherit some of their crimes; and you've got to pay for them." "Not on your life!" he laughed, easily; but in the laugh there was something that cut me more deeply than he knew. CHAPTER XXI But once we were settled in Newport, I almost forgot the tragedy of Sarajevo. The world, it seemed to me, had forgotten it, too; it had passed into history. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek being dead and buried, we had gone on to something else. Personally I had gone on to the readjustment of my life. I was with Ethel Rossiter as a guest. Guest or retainer, however, made little difference. She treated me just as before--with the same detached, live-and-let-live kindliness that dropped into the old habit of making use of me. I liked that. It kept us on a simple, natural footing. I could see myself writing her notes and answering her telephone calls as long as I lived. Except that now and then, when she thought of it, she called me Alix, instead of Miss Adare, she might still have been paying me so much a month. "Well, I can't get over father," was the burden of her congratulations to me. "I knew that woman could turn him around her finger; but I didn't suppose she could do it like that. You played your cards well in getting hold of her." "I didn't play my cards," was my usual defense, "because I had none to play.'" "Then what on earth brought her over to your side?" "Life." "Life--fiddlesticks! It was life with a good deal of help from Alix Adare." She added, on one occasion: "Why didn't you take that young Strangways--frankly, now?" "Because," I smiled, "I don't believe in polyandry." "But you're fond of him. That's what beats me! You're fond of one man and you're marrying another; and yet--" I don't know what color I turned outwardly, but within I was fire. It was the fire of confusion and not of indignation. I felt it safest to let her go on, hazarding no remarks of my own. "And yet--what?" "And yet you don't seem like a girl who'd marry for money--you really don't. That's one thing about you." I screwed up a wan smile. "Thanks." "So that I'm all in the dark. What you can see in Hugh--" "What I can see in Hugh is the kindest of men. That's a good deal to say of any one." "Well, I'll be hanged if I'd marry even the kindest of men if it was for nothing but his kindness."