As they crossed the platform he slipped off again to the President’s chair, whispered a word to him, and returned.

“Come through here,” he whispered.

Together they passed through the door at the back, and so into one of the little rooms through which they had come together half an hour before.  There he closed both doors carefully and came up to the priest.

“Monsignor,” he said, and hesitated.

The priest looked at him curiously.  He began to see that a disclosure was coming.

“Monsignor, I have not been hard on you. . . .  I came as soon as I could. . . .”

“Well?”

“I . . .  I don’t know what’s going to happen.  The envoy’s coming at the last hour.  The Council is in a very divided state of mind.  You saw that?”

“Well?”

“They’re wavering.  It’s no use denying it.  They’d accept almost anything.  It’s perfectly desperate.  They see that now.”

He was fingering the priest’s sleeve by now, and his eyes were full of a pitiable anxiety.

“What do you wish me to do?”

“Well, they’ll say I was responsible—­if the negotiations come to anything, I mean.  They’ll say I urged them on.  They’ll sacrifice me—­me and the President.  They’ll say they never would have gone to such lengths——­What’s that noise?”

Monsignor jerked his head impatiently.  He began to see light.

“Well,” went on the other nervously, “I want you to speak for me, if necessary—­if necessary, you understand?  You’re a Christian, Monsignor. . .  You’ll stand by me.”

The priest waited before answering; as the situation took shape before his eyes, he began to understand more and more clearly; and yet——­

A voice called out sharply beyond the door, and Hardy leapt to the handle, beckoning with his head; and as the priest obediently followed, he gave him one more look of entreaty and opened the door.  The President stood there.  The great man, more impressive than ever now, as his great height showed itself, ran his eyes slowly over the two.

“Come back to the hall,” he said, so slowly that even the priest understood it, and turned.

“The envoy’s coming,” whispered Hardy breathlessly, as he paused before following.  “You’ll remember, Monsignor? . . .”

It was hardly a minute since they had left, and yet all confusion had vanished.  Every man was back in his seat, with that same impassive and yet attentive air that they had worn when Monsignor first saw them.  Yet, with his new knowledge, it seemed to him as if he could detect, beneath all that, something of the indecisiveness of which he had just learned.  Certainly they were under admirable discipline; yet he began to see that even socialistic discipline had its limitations.

The President was already in the act of sitting down, Hardy was stepping up behind him, and the priest was still hesitating by the door, when down at the lower end of the hall there was a movement among those who guarded it, the great doors opened, and a figure walked straight in, without looking to right or left.