He wheeled round surprisingly. His astonishment grew when he saw me, the silent companion of his luncheons. “Monsieur speaks Ertarian,” he said. “A little,” I answered modestly, yet with inward elation. To surprise a man of granite! Elation was surely pardonable. “As a native,” he continued. I bowed. “It is wonderful! Are you Ertarian?” “No,” I replied. “No,” he echoed with regret. “You are English. I saw you smoke a pipe. But you know my real name? I am Captain Schneidlitz here.” I laughed. “Pardon me, General, I have been amusing myself with your surprise. My father was British Minister at Tsalburg for many years. As a boy I spent my holidays there. Hence my accent.” “Your name is—?” he demanded. “Havensea,” I answered. “Then your father is ——?” “Exactly. I am now the head of my family. It is a large family, General. I have tens of aunts; my cousins are limitless. I pass an uneasy life trying to evade them and my unnecessary title. It is difficult—please respect my incognito as I respect yours, Captain Schneidlitz.” “You dislike your title?” he asked eagerly. “The coronet has given me a headache of the soul. You don’t know how terrible a British title is. It is a mere lever for opening bazaars, a free ticket to everybody’s dinners.” “You object to yourself?” His question, the question of the man of granite, was tremulous with excitement. “Pardon me,” I answered; “not to myself—but to the impossibility of being myself. I am an English peer. I have not even the picturesqueness of poverty. You do not understand. In Ertaria they do not hold flower shows. I do not object to myself—I object to Lord Havensea.” The General looked round anxiously. A wide-breeched soldier was walking toward the fort; a white-stringed bonnet was going home. Seaward the streak of smoke blackened the eye of the sun. The sight of that caused the man of granite to swear solemnly in Ertarian—a language admitting a wide choice of expression to a man oppressed with a sense of wrong. “I will reply to your first question,” he said. He spoke in a low voice. He was under some strong emotion. “I am disturbed. That little streak of smoke dissolving out there represents my hopes dissipated, evaporated. My hopes are the hopes of Ertaria. We are a small country, but we are proud.” “A country’s pride invariably compensates for lack of acres.” “It is a jest to you,” he said sadly. I had expected him to be angry at my flippant remark. The sadness of his voice slipped past my guard. Here at last I had found a man who could feel. “Your pardon, General,” I said more soberly than I had previously spoken. “The pride of Ertaria I know rests upon an unstained national honor.” “If you believed that!” he cried. “I do,” I answered stoutly. “Frankly, you are all absurd, but it is a glorious absurdity. Small, hemmed in by enemies, you have kept an independence, noble and untainted, for seven hundred years.”