-"has them," she said. "But do not worry
your little head this hot weather too much."

"It won't melt," I said, resenting that my head should be regarded as
so very small and also made of sugar,--she said something like this the
other day, and I resented that too.

"There are people whose business it is to think these high matters out
for us," she said, "and in their hands we can safely leave them."

"As if they were God," I remarked.

She looked at me critically again. "Precisely," she said. "Loyal
subjects, true Christians, are alike in their unquestioning trust and
obedience to authority."

I came upstairs then, in case I shouldn't be able to keep from saying
something truthful and rude.

What a misfortune it is that truth always is so rude. So that a person
who, like myself, for reasons that I can't help thinking are on the
whole base, is anxious to hang on to being what servants call a real
lady, is accordingly constantly forced into a regrettable want of
candour. I wish Bernd weren't a Junker. It is a great blot on his
perfection. I'd much rather he were a navvy, a stark, swearing navvy,
and we could go in for stark, swearing candour, and I needn't be a lady
any more. It's so middle-class being a lady. These German aristocrats
are hopelessly middle-class.

I know when I get to Berlin, and only want to keep abreast of the real
things that may be going to happen, which will take me all my time, for
I haven't been used to big events, it will be very annoying to be
caught and delayed at every turn by small nets of politenesses and
phrases and considerations, by having to remember every blessed one of
the manners they go in for so terribly here. I've never met so _much_
manners as in Germany. The protestations you have to make! The
elaborateness and length of every acceptance or refusal! And it's all
so much fluff and wind, signifying nothing, nothing at all unless it's
fear; fear, again, their everlasting haunting spectre; fear of the
other person's being offended if he is stronger than you, higher
up,--because then he'll hurt you, punish you somehow; ten to one, if
you're a man, he'll fight you.

I've read the Austrian Note. I don't wonder very much at Servia's
refusing to accept it, and yet surely it would have been wiser if she
had accepted it, anyhow as much of it as she _possibly_ could.

"Much wiser," said the Grafin, smiling gently when I said this at
dinner tonight. "At least, wiser f