Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/70

 "It depends," I responded calmly, "upon what they are talking about. I have known people to look as devoted as that, when no more sentimental subject was under discussion than the weather."

"What a vivid imagination you Americans must have!"

"I don't understand how your criticism applies," I retorted.

"Perhaps I should have said, what a power of deception, instead of a vivid imagination. It must require both to give such an expression of rapt attention to two people who are only talking about the weather."

I don't like Mr. Chilton Thurber when he sneers in this way. One must excuse anything, however, in a man who is jealous.

"I didn't say they were only talking of the weather," I asserted. "They may be making the most desperate love to each other, for all I know. But you are quite right when you say we have more imagination than the English. I have enough to conceive that you English may be very fond of your country,—even your foggy old capital, which it makes me melancholy to think of," I added, with a shudder.

"I am not particularly fond of England," he returned earnestly. "In fact, I prefer living abroad,—though not in Russia," after a short pause.

"Where?" I asked, with a look of laughing inquiry. "In what genial clime would you pitch your tent, if you had the world to choose from?"

He hesitated, then said, with a strange expression on