“I shan’t be a minute,” Nigel promised.  “I’m going to change into flannels after lunch—­that is, if you don’t mind playing a set or two at tennis.  My cousin-in-law Maggie Trent, whom you’ll meet at luncheon, is rather keen, and she doesn’t care about golf.”

“I’m game for anything,” the other agreed, lifting his head spluttering from the basin.  “Gee, that’s good!  Get a move on, there’s a good fellow.  I have a fancy for just five minutes with you out on the lawn, with the ice chinking in our glasses.”

Nigel finished smoothing his hair, and the two men strolled through the hall, gave an order to a red-coated attendant, and found a secluded table under a marvellous tree in the gardens on the other side.  Chalmers had become a little thoughtful.

“Dorminster,” he declared, “yours is a wonderful country.”

“Just how is it appealing to you at the moment?” Nigel enquired.

“I’ll try and tell you,” was the meditative reply.  “It’s your extraordinary insouciance.  It seems to me, as a budding diplomat, that you are running the most ghastly risks on earth.”

“In what direction?”

The young American shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, you’ve got a thoroughly democratic Government—­not such a bad Government, I should say, as things go.  They’ve bled your bourgeoisie a bit, and serve ’em right, but with an empire to keep up you’re losing all touch upon international politics.  Your ambassadors have been exchanged for trade consuls, the whole of your secret service staff has been disbanded, you place your entire faith on this sacred League of Nations.  Say, Dorminster, you’re taking risks!”

“You mustn’t forget,” Dorminster replied, “that it was your country who started the League of Nations.”

“President Wilson did,” Chalmers grunted.  “You can’t say that the country ever backed him up.  That’s the worst of us on the other side—­we so seldom really get a common voice.”

“The League of Nations was a thundering good idea,” Nigel declared, “but it belongs to Utopia and not to this vulgar planet.”

“Just so,” Chalmers rejoined, “and yet you are about the only nation who ever took it into her bosom and suckled it.  To be perfectly frank with you, now, what other nation in the world is there, except yours, which is obeying the conventions strictly?  I tell you frankly, we keep our eye on Japan, and we build a good many commercial ships which would astonish you if you examined them thoroughly.  Our National Guard, too, know a bit more about soldiering than their grandfathers.  You people, on the other hand, seem to have become infatuated pacifists.  I can’t tell tales out of school, but I don’t like the way things are going on eastwards.  Asia means something different now that that amazing fellow, Prince Shan, has made a great nation of China.”

“I am entirely in accord with you,” Nigel agreed, “but what is one to do about it?  Our present Government has a big majority, trade at home and abroad is prosperous, the income tax is down to a shilling in the pound and looks like being wiped out altogether.  Everybody is fat and happy.”