Mr. Foley half-closed his eyes and sighed.

“Oh, my dear Maraton,” he murmured, “it isn’t a question of belief!  It’s like asking me whether I believe I can see from here into my own drawing-room.  The figures in there are real enough, aren’t they?  So is the cloud I can see gathering all the time over our heads.  It is a question only of the propitious moment—­of that there is no manner of doubt.”

“You speak of affairs,” Maraton admitted, “of which I know nothing.  I do not even understand the balance of power.  I always thought, though, that every great nation, our own included, paid a certain amount of insurance in the shape of huge contributions towards a navy and army; that we paid such insurance as was necessary and were rewarded with adequate results.”

Mr. Foley forgot his depression for an instant, and smiled.

“What a theorist you are!  It all depends upon the amount of insurance you take up, whether the risk is covered.  We’ve under-insured for many years, thanks to that little kink in our disposition.  We got a nasty knock in South Africa and we had to pay our own loss.  It did us good for a year or two.  Now the pendulum has just reached the other extreme.  We’ve swung back once more into our silly dream.  Oh, Maraton, it’s true enough that we have great problems to face sociologically!  Don’t think that I underrate them.  You know I don’t.  But every time I sit and talk to you, I have always at the back of my mind that other fear. . . .  Have you seen Maxendorf to-night?”

“I have just left him,” Maraton replied.

“An interesting interview?”

“Very!”

Mr. Foley gripped his arm.

“My friend,” he said,—­“you see, I am beginning to call you that—­you have talked to-night with one of the most wonderful and the most dangerous enemies of our country.  You won’t think me drivelling, will you, or presuming, if I beg you to remember that fact, and that you are, notwithstanding your foreign birth, one of us?  You are an Englishman, a member of the English House of Parliament.”

“I do not forget that,” Maraton declared gravely.

“Go and find Lady Elisabeth,” Mr. Foley directed.  “She was a little hurt at the idea that you were not coming.  I have a few more words to say to Armley.”

Maraton passed on into the rooms, which were only half filled.  Some fancy possessed him to pause for a moment in the spot where he had stood alone for some time on his first visit to this house, and as he lingered there, Lady Elisabeth came into the room, leaning on the arm of a great lawyer.  She saw him almost at once—­her eyes, indeed, seemed to glance instinctively towards the spot where he was standing.  Maraton felt the change in her expression.  With a whisper she left her escort and came immediately in his direction.  He watched her, step by step.  Was it his fancy or had she lost some of the haughtiness of carriage which he had noticed that night not many months ago; the slight coldness which in those first moments had half attracted and half repelled him?  Perhaps it was because he was now admitted within the circle of her friends.  She came to him, at any rate, quickly, almost eagerly, and the smile about her lips as she took his hand was one of real and natural pleasure.