Von Lissing. I liked him so much that week-end you
brought him down. What's happened to him? I
suppose he's gone?"

"Gone?" He turned and looked at her in the twilight.
Really, Aunt Mary was sometimes very silly.
"Of course, he's gone! As a matter of fact he left
London ten days before his chief." And then he
added reflectively, perhaps with more a wish to tease
her than anything else, "I've rather wondered this last
week whether Von Lissing's friendship with me was
regarded by him as a business matter. He sometimes
asked me such odd questions. Of course one has always
known that Germans are singularly inquisitive -- that
they are always wanting to find out things. I
confess it never struck me at the time that his questions
meant anything more than that sort of insatiable
wish _to_know_ that all Germans have."

"What sort of things did he ask you, James?" asked
Mrs. Otway curiously.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing he said, and it astonished
me very much indeed. He asked me what attitude
I thought our colonies would take if we became
embroiled in a European war! I reminded him of
what they'd done in South Africa fourteen years ago,
and he said he thought the world had altered a good
deal since then, and that people had become more
selfish. But he never asked me any question concerning
my own special department. In those ways he
quite played the game -- not that it would have been
of any use, because of course I shouldn't have told
him anything. But he was certainly oddly inquiring
about other departments."

[[128]]

p127 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p128w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p129

v?