“You have been so fine in waiving an indemnity,” said the premier of the Grays, “that Turcas suggests we pay for all the damage done to property on your side by our invasion.  I’m sure our people will rise to the suggestion.  Their mood has overwhelmed every preconceived notion of mine.  In place of the old suspicion that a Brown could do nothing except with a selfish motive is the desire to be as fair as the Browns.  And the practical way the people look at it makes me think that it will be enduring.”

“I think so, for the same reason,” responded the premier of the Browns.  “They say it is good business.  It means prosperity and progress for both countries.”

“After all, a soldier comes out the hero of the great peace movement,” concluded the premier of the Grays.  “A soldier took the tricks with our own cards.  Old Partow was the greatest statesman of us all.”

“No doubt of that!” agreed the premier of the Browns.  “It’s a sentiment to which every premier of ours who ever tried to down him would have readily subscribed!”

The every-day statesman smiles when he sees the people smile and grows angry when they grow angry.  Now and then appears an inscrutable genius who finds out what is brewing in their brains and brings it to a head.  He is the epoch maker.  Such an one was that little Corsican, who gave a stagnant pool the storm it needed, until he became overfed and mistook his ambition for a continuation of his youthful prescience.

* * * * *

Marta had yet to bear the shock of Westerling’s death.  After learning the manner of it she went to her room, where she spent a haunted, sleepless night.  The morning found her still tortured by her visualization of the picture of him, irresolute as the mob pressed around the Gray headquarters.

“It is as if I had murdered him!” she said.  “I let him make love to me—­I let my hand remain in his once—­but that was all, Lanny.  I—­I couldn’t have borne any more.  Yet that was enough—­enough!”

“But we know now, Marta,” Lanstron pleaded, “that the premier of the Grays held Westerling to a compact that he should not return alive if he lost.  He could not have won, even though you had not helped us against him.  He would only have lost more lives and brought still greater indignation on his head.  His fate was inevitable—­and he was a soldier.”

But his reasoning only racked her with a shudder.

“If he had only died fighting!” Marta replied.  “He died like a rat in a trap and I—­I set the trap!”

“No, destiny set it!” put in Mrs. Galland.

Lanstron dropped down beside Marta’s chair.

“Yes, destiny set it,” he said, imploringly.

“Just as it set your part for you.  And, Marta,” Mrs. Galland went on gently, with what Marta had once called the wisdom of mothers, “Lanny lives and lives for you.  Your destiny is life and to make the most of life, as you always have.  Isn’t it, Marta?”