he began to talk at headlong speed, and with considerable eloquence,
of Sorell's virtues and accomplishments. Constance, who had been brought
up in a southern country, liked the eloquence. Something in her was
already tired of the slangy brevities that do duty in England for
conversation. At the same time she thought she understood why Falloden,
and Meyrick, and others called the youth a _poseur_, and angrily wished
to snub him. He possessed besides, in-bred, all the foreign aids to the
mere voice--gesticulation of hands and head, movements that to the
Englishman are unexpected and therefore disagreeable. Also there,
undeniably, was the frilled dress-shirt, and the two diamond studs, much
larger and more conspicuous than Oxford taste allowed, which added to
its criminality. And it was easy to see too that the youth was
inordinately proud of his Polish ancestry, and inclined to rate all
Englishmen as _parvenus_ and shopkeepers.

"Was it in Paris you first made friends with Mr. Sorell?" Connie asked
him.

Radowitz nodded.

"I was nineteen. My uncle had just died. I had nobody. You understand,
my father was exiled twenty years ago. We belong to German Poland;
though there has always been a branch of the family in Cracow. For more
than a hundred years these vile Germans have been crushing and
tormenting us. They have taken our land, they have tried to kill our
language and our religion. But they can not. Our soul lives. Poland
lives. And some day there will be a great war--and then Poland will rise
again. From the East and the West and the South they will come--and the
body that was hewn asunder will be young and glorious again." His blue
eyes shone. "Some day, I will play you that in music. Chopin is full of
it--the death of Poland--and then her soul, her songs, her hopes, her
rising again. Ah, but Sorell!--I will explain. I saw him one night at a
house of kind people--the master of it was the Directeur of the Ecole
des Sciences Politiques--and his wife. She was so beautiful, though she
was not young; and gentle, like a child; and so good. I was nothing to
them--but I went to some lectures at the school, while I was still at
the Conservatoire, and I used to go and play to them sometimes. So when
my uncle died, they said, 'Come and stay with us.' I had really nobody.
My father and mother died years ago. My mother, you understand, was half
English; I always spoke English with her. She knew I must be a musician.
That was