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HOW long I stood there, hesitating and embarrassed, while Helga was holding the door open for me in that queenly pose of splendid indignation, I do not know, but realizing at last that I could not go and leave her to execute her threat, I turned back rather sheepishly and sat down again.

“You have put the thing on such a different and so unexpected a footing that we had better wait at least until you are calmer,” I said.

But she was in the mood to push her triumph to the utmost.

“I shall never be calm on this subject. It is for you to say at once, monsieur, whether you decide to go.”

“I don’t see any such necessity,” I answered curtly.

It is difficult to describe my condition of mind. The thing was really nothing to me. Whether Russia went to war with twenty other countries would not have troubled me. I had no concern whether her diplomatists had made fools of themselves, and that Helga should have them by the throat rather pleased than angered me. And yet I was as irritable as a millionaire when his digestion goes wrong. I suppose I was in a temper at having been beaten. No one cares to look small in the eyes of a woman he admires as I admired her. And small I certainly felt and must have looked.