well."

"Possible," replied the count, "but perhaps we are accountable for it,
too. We now have the right perspective, and you know that pictures grow
more beautiful when viewed from the right distance. But above all,
Professor, we need that. In our old age we wish to have beautiful youth
about us, we demand beauty of youth. That is very egoistic. We enjoy it
at our ease. But poor youth. Do you think 'being beautiful' is easy?
Beauty complicates destiny, imposes responsibilities, and above all it
disturbs our seclusion. Imagine, Professor, that you were very
beautiful. With every human being you encounter your face establishes
some relation, affects him, forces itself upon him, speaks to him,
whether you will or no. Beauty is a constant indiscretion. Would that
be agreeable?"

"I ... I suppose I can't just imagine myself in that situation,"
replied the professor.

The count smiled his restrained, somewhat crooked smile. "Yes, yes, we
two have been spared these difficulties."

Then they turned and walked back toward the house.

On the porch they found Countess Betty, Count Hamilcar's sister, who
had been managing his household and bringing up his children ever since
he became a widower. She was dressed in her imposing white lace
burnous. The white face with its little pink cheeks looked very small
under the great lace cap fashionable in the sixties. Aunt Betty was
sitting as at a sick-bed beside the reclining chair on which her oldest
niece Lisa had stretched herself. Lisa, the divorced wife of Prince
Katakasianopulos, wearily leaned her head back and half closed her
eyes. Short tangled brown curls hung into the delicate pale face in a
kind of Ophelia-coiffure. She wore a black lace dress, for ever since
the annulling of her marriage she liked to dress in black. She had made
the acquaintance of her Greek at Biarritz, and had obstinately insisted
on marrying him. But when Prince Katakasianopulos proved himself an
impossible spouse, the family was happy to be rid of him again.

Lisa, however, had since then retained a tragic something which Aunt
Betty treated as sickness and invested with the most solicitous care.
The tutor, a stately Hanoverian, and Bob, the youngest of the family,
had also appeared on the scene.

"How do you feel, Lady Princess?" asked the professor.

Lisa smiled faintly. "I thank you, a little weary."

"We need rest," opined Aunt Betty.

In the background Bob's unmannerly voice echoed, "War