o 3b3e7475144cf77c

such a featherbrain.

So there was a new menage, with everything comfortable, and no trouble but the writing of a

few checks and the giving of a few orders. A delightful climate and many delightful people; a

tennis court and somebody always to play; a good piano and people who loved music; only a few

minutes' drive to the old castle, where Lanny and his wife were treated as members of the

family, called up and urged to meet this one and that. Again Lanny heard statesmen discussing

the problems of the world; again they listened to what he had to tell about the strange and

terrifying new movement in Germany, and its efforts to spread itself in all the neighboring

countries. Englishmen of rank and authority talked freely of their empire's affairs, telling what

they would do in this or that contingency; now and then Lanny would find himself thinking:

"What wouldn't Göring pay for this!"

Zoltan had been in Paris, and now came to London. It was the "season," and there were

exhibitions, and chances to make sales. An art expert, like the member of any other profession,

has to hear the gossip of his monde; new men are coming in and old ones going out, and prices

fluctuating exactly as on the stock market. Lanny and his partner still had money in Naziland,

and lists of pictures available in that country, by means of which they expected to get their

money out. Also, there was the London stage, and Rick to go with them to plays and tell the

news of that world. There was the fashion rout, with no end of dances and parties.

Dressmakers and others clamored to provide Irma with costumes suited to her station; they

would bring them out into the country to show her at any hour of the day or night.

Good old Margy Petries, Dowager Lady Eversham-Watson, had opened her town house,

and begged the young couple to make it their headquarters whenever they came to town; she

telegraphed Beauty and Sophie to bring their husbands and come and have a good old-

fashioned spree. When Mrs. Barnes arrived, she, too, was "put up"; that was the custom in

Kentucky, and Margy still called herself a blue-grass-country girl, even at the age of fifty-five.

So it was just like Bienvenu at the height of midwinter; so many things going on that really

you had a hard time choosing, and would rush from one event to the next with scarcely time to

catch your breath. It was extremely difficult for Lanny to find time to brood over the fate of the

world; and that was what his wife had planned. She saw that she was winning out, and was

happy, and proud of her acumen. Until one Saturday noon, arriving at their villa for a week

end, Lanny found a telegram from Bienvenu, signed "Rahel" and reading:

"Letter from Clarinet in place you visited most distressing circumstances he implores help

am airmailing letter."

26

Out of This Nettle, Danger

I

THE argument started as soon as Irma read the telegram and got its meaning clear. She

knew exactly what would be in her husband's mind; she had been thinking about it for more

than a year, watching him, anticipating this moment, living through this scene. And she knew

that he had been doing the same. They had talked about it a great deal, but she hadn't

uttered all of her thoughts, nor he of his; they had dreaded the ordeal, shrinking from the

things that would be said. She knew that was true about herself, and guessed it was true about

him; she guessed that he guessed it about her—and so on through a complication such as

develops when two human souls, tied together by passionate love, discover a basic and

fundamental clash of temperaments, and try to conceal it from each other and even from

themselves.

Irma said: "Lanny, you can't do it! You can't, you can't!" And he replied: "Darling, I have to!

If I didn't I couldn't bear to live!"

So much had been said already that there was nothing to gain by going over it. But that is

the way with lovers' quarrels; each thinks that if he says it one time more, the idea will

penetrate, it will make the impression which it so obviously ought to make, which it has

somehow incomprehensibly failed to make on previous occasions.

Irma protested: "Your wife and child mean nothing to you?"

Lanny answered: "You know they do, dear. I have tried honestly to be a good husband and

father. I have given up many things that I thought were right for me, when I found they were

wrong for you. But I can't give up Freddi to the Nazis."

"A man is free to take up a notion like that—and then all his family duties become nothing?"

"A man takes up a notion like that when there's a cause involved; something that is more

precious to him than his own life."

"You're going to sacrifice Frances and me for Freddi!"

"That's rather exaggerated, darling. You and Frances can stay quite comfortably here while I

go in and do what I can."

"You're not asking me to go with you?"

"It's a job for someone who believes in it, and certainly not for anyone who feels as you do. I

have no right to ask it of you, and that's why I don't."