At a time when most people shrank from truth her candour was marvellous, with the simplicity of childhood joined to the wisdom of womanhood.
I saw this at the dinner-party for four, arranged in her honour, by Daddy Small. That was given, for cheapness' sake, at a little old restaurant in Whitehall which provided a good dinner for a few shillings, and in an "atmosphere" of old-fashioned respectability which appealed to the little American.
Eileen knocked Brand edgewise at the beginning of his dinner by remarking about his German marriage.
"The news came to me as a shock," she said, and when Wickham raised his eyebrows and looked both surprised and dismayed (he had counted on her sympathy and help), she patted his hand as it played a devil's tattoo on the table-cloth, and launched into a series of indiscretions that fairly made my hair curl.
"Theoretically," she said, "I hadn't the least objection to your marrying a German girl. I have always believed that love is an instinct which is beyond the control of diplomats who arrange frontiers and Generals who direct wars. I saw a lot of it in Lille—and there was Franz von Kreuzenach, who fell in love with me, poor child. What really hurt me for a while was green-eyed jealousy."
"Daddy Small laughed hilariously, and filled up Eileen's glass with Moselle wine.
Brand looked blank.
"Jealousy?"
"Why, yes," said Eileen. "Imagine me, an Irish girl, all soppy with emotion at the first sight of English khaki (that's a fantastic situation anyhow!), after four years with the grey men, and then finding that the first khaki tunic she meets holds the body of a man she knew as a boy, when she used to pull his hair! And such a grave
