feet and a murmur of voices. The two men turned from their window back into the room. Dorward commenced to roll a cigarette with yellow-stained, nervous fingers, while Bellamy threw himself into an easy-chair with a gesture of depression. 

 “So it is over, this long-talked-of meeting,” he said, half to himself, half to Dorward. “It is over, and Europe is left to wonder.” 

 “They were together for scarcely more than an hour,” Dorward murmured. 

 “Long enough,” Bellamy answered. “That little room in the Palace, my friend, may yet become famous.” 

 “If you and I could buy its secrets,” Dorward remarked, finally shaping a cigarette and lighting it, “we should be big bidders, I think. I’d give fifty thousand dollars myself to be able to cable even a hundred words of their conversation.” 

 “For the truth,” Bellamy said, “the whole truth, there could be no price sufficient. We made our effort in different directions, both of us. With infinite pains I planted—I may tell you this now that the thing is over—seven spies in the Palace. They have been of as much use as rabbits. I don’t believe that a single one of them got any further than the kitchens.” 

 Dorward nodded gloomily. 

 “I guess they weren’t taking any chances up there,” he remarked. “There wasn’t a secretary in the room. Carstairs was nearly thrown out, and he had a permit to enter the Palace. The great staircase was held with soldiers, and Dick swore that there were Maxims in the corridors.” 

 Bellamy sighed. 

 “We shall hear the roar of bigger guns before we are many months older, Dorward,” he declared. 

 The journalist glanced at his friend keenly. “You believe that?” 

 Bellamy shrugged his shoulders. 

 “Do you suppose that this meeting is for nothing?” he asked. “When Austria, Germany and Russia stand whispering in a corner, can’t you believe it is across the North Sea that they point? Things have been shaping that way for years, and the time is almost ripe.” 

 “You English are too nervous to live, nowadays,” Dorward declared impatiently. “I’d just like to know what they said about America.” 

 Bellamy smiled with faint but delicate irony. 

 “Without a doubt, the 

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