But Elodie had fallen under the spell of Bakkus. Like him she loved talk, although her education allowed her only the lightest kind. She loved its give-and-take, its opportunities for the flash of wit or jest. Bakkus could talk about an old boot. She too. He could analyse sentiment in his mordant way. She could analyse it in her own unsophisticated fashion. Now Andrew, though death on facts and serious argument, remained dumb and bewildered in a passage-at-arms about apparently nothing at all; and while Bakkus and Elodie enjoyed themselves prodigiously, he gaped at them, wondering what the deuce they found to laugh at. He was for ever warning Elodie not to put a too literal interpretation on Bakkus's sayings. The singer had gone grey, and that touch of venerability gave him an air of greater distinction, as a broken down tragedian, than he possessed when Andrew had first met him ten years or so before. Elodie could bandy jests with him, but when he spoke with authority she listened overawed. "My dear André," she replied to his remark. "I am not a fool. I know when Horace is talking nonsense and when he means what he says." "And I maintain," said Bakkus, "that this most adorable woman is being sacrificed on the altar of Cæsar's Commentaries and the latest French handbook on scientific slaughter." "I think," said Andrew, who had imprudently sketched his course of reading to the cynic, "that _The Art of War_ by Colonel Foch is the most masterly thing ever written on the subject of warfare." "But who is going to war, these days, my good fellow?" "They're at it now," said Andrew. "The Balkans--Turkey--Bulgaria? Barbarians. What's that got to do with civilized England and France?" "What about Germany?" "Germany's never going to sacrifice her commercial position by going to war. Among great powers war is a lunatic anachronism." "Oh, _mon Dieu_," cried Elodie, "now you're talking politics." Bakkus took her hand which held a fork on which was prodded a gherkin--they were at lunch--and raised it to his lips. "_Pardon, chère madame_. It was this maniac of an André. He is mad or worse. Years ago I told him he ought to be a sergeant in a barrack square." "Just so!" cried Elodie. "Look at him now. Here he is as soft as two pennyworth of butter. But in the theatre, if things do not go quite as he wants them--oh la la! It is Right turn--Quick march! Brr! And I who speak have to do just the same as the others." "I know," said Bakkus. "A Prussian without bowels. Ah, my poor Elodie! My heart bleeds for you." "Where do you keep it--that organ?" asked Andrew. "He keeps it," retorted Elodie, "where you haven't got it. Horace understands me. You don't. Horace and I are going to talk. You smoke your cigar and think of battles and don't interfere."