 - I have already seen a great many in my life. If it didn't
sound ungracious I should say that I wish very humbly your people here would
leave me alone!«
    Acton looked at her a moment, and she looked at him. She was a woman who
took being looked at remarkably well. »So you have come here for rest?« he
asked.
    »So I may say. I came for many of those reasons that are no reasons - don't
you know? - and yet that are really the best: to come away, to change, to break
with everything. When once one comes away one must arrive somewhere, and I asked
myself why I shouldn't arrive here.«
    »You certainly had time on the way!« said Acton, laughing.
    Madame Münster looked at him again; and then, smiling: »And I have certainly
had time, since I got here, to ask myself why I came. However, I never ask
myself idle questions. Here I am, and it seems to me you ought only to thank
me.«
    »When you go away you will see the difficulties I shall put in your path.«
    »You mean to put difficulties in my path?« she asked, rearranging the
rosebud in her corsage.
    »The greatest of all - that of having been so agreeable« -
    »That I shall be unable to depart? Don't be too sure. I have left some very
agreeable people over there.«
    »Ah,« said Acton, »but it was to come here, where I am!«
    »I didn't know of your existence. Excuse me for saying anything so rude;
but, honestly speaking, I did not. No,« the Baroness pursued, »it was precisely
not to see you - such people as you - that I came.«
    »Such people as me?« cried Acton.
    »I had a sort of longing to come into those natural relations which I knew I
should find here. Over there I had only, as I may say, artificial relations.
Don't you see the difference?«
    »The difference tells against me,« said Acton. »I suppose I am an artificial
relation.«
    »Conventional,« declared the Baroness; »very conventional.«
    »Well, there is one way in which the relation of a lady and a gentleman may
always become natural,« said Acton.
    »You mean by their becoming lovers? That may be natural or not. And at any
