"As a matter of fact," Pamela admitted generously, "I consider that your Colonials understand the word patriotism better than the ordinary Englishman. With them, as with the Germans, it is almost a passionate impulse. Your hearts may be in the right places, but you always give one the impression of finding the whole thing rather a bore." "Well, so it is," Lutchester insisted. "Who wants to give up a very agreeable profession and enter upon a career of bloodshed, abandon all one's habits, and lose most of one's friends? No, we are honest about that, at any rate! Germany may be enjoying this war. We aren't." "What was your profession?" Pamela inquired. "Diplomacy," Lutchester confided. "I intended to become an ambassador." "Do you think you have the requisite gifts?" "What are they?" "Secrecy, subtlety, caution, and highly-developed intelligence," she replied. "How's that?" "All those gifts," he assured her, "I possess." She fanned herself for a moment and looked at him. "We are not a modest race ourselves," she said, "but I think you can give us a lead. By the bye, were you playing golf with Senator Hamblin by accident the other afternoon?" "You mean the old Johnny down at Baltusrol?" he asked coolly. "I picked him up wandering about by the professionals' shed." "Did you talk politics with him?" "We gassed a bit about the war," Lutchester admitted cheerfully. Pamela laughed. She leaned a little forward. The buzz of conversation now was insistent all around them. "Of you two," she whispered, "I prefer Fischer." Lutchester considered the matter for some time. "Well, there's no accounting for tastes," he said presently. "I shouldn't have thought him exactly your type." "He may not be," Pamela confessed, "but at least he has the courage to speak what is in his mind." Lutchester smiled. "So Fischer has taken you into his confidence, has he?" he murmured. "Well, now, that seems queer to me. I should have thought your interests would have lain the other way." "As an individual?" "As an American." "I am not wholly convinced of that." "Come," he protested, "what is the use of a friend from whom you are separated by an unnegotiable space?" "What unnegotiable space?" "The Atlantic." "And why is the Atlantic unnegotiable?" "Because of a little affair called the British fleet," Lutchester pointed out. "There is also," she reminded him drily, "a German fleet, and they haven't met yet." "Ah! I had almost forgotten there was such a thing," he murmured. "Where do they keep it?" "You know. You aren't nearly so stupid as you pretend to be," she said, a little impatiently. "I should like you so much better if you would be frank with me." "What about those qualifications for my ambassadorial career?" he reminded her--"Secrecy, subtlety, caution." "The master of these," she whispered, rising to her feet in response to her hostess's signal, "knows when to abandon them--"