line of some particular duty which officialdom was pleased to assure me could not be so well accomplished by any other person of its acquaintance. That was why Alexis Saberevski laughed. 

 "Is your resignation still on file? Or is it only lying on the table awaiting action, Daniel?" he asked me, and there was just a touch of ironic suggestion in his manner, which nettled me. 

 "The resignation is a fact this time," I replied. "I have earned a period of rest, and I propose to take it." 

 "Going abroad, Derrington?" 

 "No." 

 "Prefer to undergo the process of dry rot, here in New York?" 

 "Yes; for a time at least." 

 "Is there nothing on the other side of the water, that attracts you?" 

 "Nothing at all." 

 He switched his right leg to his left knee and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. 

 "You're not a lazy chap, Dan," he remarked, as if he were deeply considering the verity of that statement. "One wouldn't pick you out as a blasé individual who is tired of everything the world has to offer. You are as filled with energy and nervous force as any chap I ever knew; and you are not yet thirty-five." 

 "Quite true," I admitted. 

 "Yet, like a craft that has fought its way through stormy seas around the world, you sit there and try to assure me that you are content to tie up against a rotting wharf, in an odorous slip, and pass the rest of your days in inaction. It isn't like you, Dan." 

 "It looks very enticing to me just now, however." 

 "The trouble is," he said, "that your American diplomacy and your amazing politics over here, offer no opportunities to a man of your talents. You should go against the pricks of European intrigue. You ought to butt in, as you fellows express it, upon French statecraft which leaves nothing to be desired in the way of double dealings. You should try Austrian lies, or German brutalities, or Italian and Spanish 

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