"_Zut_! You English are so naive. Why save them? Why not let them drown? Do they not deserve to drown? Look what they have done, those Boches! And you save them! Why did the German ships run away? They had set a trap--that sees itself--in addition to being cowards. You save them, and you think you have made a fine gesture; but you are nothing but simpletons." She shrugged her shoulders in inarticulate disdain. Christine's attitude towards the war was uncomplicated by any subtleties. Disregarding all but the utmost spectacular military events, she devoted her whole soul to hatred of the Germans--and all the Germans. She believed them to be damnably cleverer than any other people on earth, and especially than the English. She believed them to be capable of all villainies whatsoever. She believed every charge brought against them, never troubling about evidence. She would have imprisoned on bread and water all Germans and all persons with German names in England. She was really shocked by the transparent idiocy of Britons who opposed the retirement of Prince Louis of Battenberg from the Navy. For weeks she had remained happily in the delusion that Prince Louis had been shot in the Tower, and when the awakening came she had instantly decided that the sinister influence of Lord Haldane and naught else must have saved Prince Louis from a just retribution. She had a vision of England as overrun with innumerable German spies who moved freely at inexpressible speed about the country in high-powered grey automobiles with dazzling headlights, while the marvellously stupid and blind British police touched their hats to them. G.J. smiled at her in silence, aware by experience of the futility of argument. He knew quite a lot of women who had almost precisely Christine's attitude towards the war, and quite a lot of men too. But he could have wished the charming creature to be as desirable for her intelligence as for her physical and her strange spiritual charm: he could have wished her not to be providing yet another specimen of the phenomena of woman repeating herself so monotonously in the various worlds of London. The simpleton of fifty made in his soul an effort to be superior, and failed. "What is it that binds me to her?" he reflected, imagining himself to be on the edge of a divine mystery, and never expecting that he and Christine were the huge contrivances of certain active spermatozoa for producing other active spermatozoa.