They spent the following day wandering with the crowds that fill the Munich streets on bright Sundays, and the Darks arrived at midnight. The next morning they all went to the lake, this time finding a very different class of skaters in possession. Munich has a small fashionable set whose members dress as fashionable people do everywhere. To-day, the women in their short cloth or tweed frocks and rich furs, their faces rosy with cold and exercise, enhanced the glittering beauty of the landscape; and the young officers were quite as decorative.

“Some class,” said Tay. “In Europe there’s no choice between the aristocrats and the peasants. In my country, now, you couldn’t take your oath that all these birds of paradise weren’t clever shop-girls, until you got close enough to take notes. But here even a snub-nosed baroness, dressed like a housekeeper, shows her class.”

“That’s about all we’ve got left,” said Dark. “You helped yourself to a sort of ready-made imitation of it, as you did to everything else it took us twenty centuries to grind out. Think you might be generous and give us a little hustle in return. Can I help you, Mrs. France?”

He buckled on her skates and they joined the throng on the ice, Tay following with Ishbel. Lord Dark, something in the fashion of his wife, was a man of almost romantic appearance covering a practical character and a keen alert brain. He was as pure a Saxon in type as still persists, with fair hair and moustache, straight proud features, and languid blue eyes in thick brown frames. His tall figure was lean and sinewy, but carried listlessly. Thrown on his own resources, he would not have been driven on to the stage, out to South Africa, or become a vague “something in the City”; he would deliberately have applied himself to the science of money-making and mastered it, his ends accelerated by his indolent manner, so tempting to sharpers. Having inherited a considerable fortune, he was content with a career on the turf. His racing stud was notable, and rarely a year passed without adding to its reputation. He also amused himself with politics and society. Devoted to Ishbel for years before he could marry her, he was now as completely happy as a man may be whose wife is giving a large part of her energies to a cause of which he fastidiously disapproves. Broadminded, he was quite willing that all women outside of his particular circle should vote, but wished that his ancestors had settled the question and spared his generation. Astute in all things, however, he not only gave his wife her head up to a certain point, but of late had done what he could to help rush the thing through and have done with it. Ishbel, like Julia, was pledged to ignore the detested subject during this brief vacation.

“Jolly place, Munich,” he observed. “We always come here in August for the Wagnerfeste. You see all Europe as well as hear good music in comfort, which is more than you could ever say of Baireuth. We’ve never been here in winter before. Have you read up a bit? There ought to be good winter sports in the mountains.”

“Rather. I don’t fancy Mr. Tay was here an hour before he discovered there was tobogganing (rodelling) and skiing at Partenkirchen. He’s talked of little else.”

“Good! Then we’ll be really happy for a week.”

Meanwhile Ishbel was gently extracting a declaration of Tay’s intentions toward Julia by the diplomatic method of assuming all.

“It is too dreadful that you will take Julia from us,” she said plaintively. “Couldn’t you live in London?”

“Not yet.” Tay turned upon her a face of almost boyish delight. “But if she’ll really have me, we could come over every summer. Do you think she will?”

“In the end, of course. I’ve known Julia for sixteen years, and waited for her to fall in love. She never does anything by halves. But she may think she can’t leave England yet.”

“I wish these women didn’t take themselves so seriously,” said Tay, viciously. “One would think the fate of England depended on them.”

Ishbel laughed. “How like Eric! But we are used to the sixteenth century masculine attitude. It wouldn’t matter so much about me, except that every one of us helps to swell the total, but Julia is a great leader, with a wonderful power of attracting attention, making recruits, and inspiring her followers. We couldn’t spare her if the fight was to go on, but if it is won this year—well, I have told her to go and leave the rest to the other women in command.”

“Oh, you have! Bully for you! What did she say?”

“She wouldn’t commit herself. If I were you, I’d simply marry her.”

“So I shall, if I’m convinced she really cares for me.”

“You don’t doubt it?”

“I don’t know. She’s a puzzle to me. Sometimes I think she’s the most natural being on earth, and at others—well—the so-called complex women aren’t in it.”

“She’s both, but none the less interesting.”

“Oh, she’s interesting, all right. But she’s become such an adept at bluffing herself that I doubt if she always knows just where she’s at. Just now she’s bluffed—or hypnotized?—herself into thinking she’s interested in me. But I have an idea she could switch off in the opposite direction as easily.”

“Julia is a bit odd,” admitted Ishbel. “Especially since she came back from the East. Even befo............