Maxendorf glanced around him.  He was in one of the best suites in the hotel, but he had the air of one who was only then, for the first time, made aware of the fact.

“These things are done for me,” he said carelessly.  “It seems I have come before I was expected.  The Embassy is scarcely ready for occupation.”

He ordered wine from the waiter and exchanged personal reminiscences with Selingman until it was brought.  Selingman grunted with satisfaction.

“Two bottles,” he remarked.  “Come, I like that.  A less thoughtful man would have ordered one first and the other afterwards.  The period of waiting for the second bottle would have destroyed the appetite.  Quite an artist, my friend Max.  And the wine—­well, we shall see.”

He raised the glass to his lips with the air of a connoisseur.

“It will do,” he decided, setting it down empty and lighting one of his black cigars.  “Now let us talk.  Or shall I, for a change, be silent and let you talk?  To-day my tongue has been busy.  Maraton is a silent man, and he has a silent secretary with great eyes behind which lurk fancies and dreams the poor little thing has never been encouraged to speak of.  A silent man—­Maraton.  Rather like you, Max.  Which of you will talk the more, I wonder?  I shall be dumb.”

“It will be I who will talk,” Maxendorf asserted.  “I, because I have a mission, things to explain to our friend here, if he will but listen.”

“Listen—­of course he will listen!” Selingman interrupted.  “You two—­what was it the Oracle called you both—­the world’s deliverers.  Put your heads together and decide how you are going to do it.  The people over here, Max, are rotting in their kennels.  Sink-holes they live in.  Live!  What a word!”

“If you indeed have something to say to me,” Maraton proposed, “let us each remember who we are.  There is no need for preambles.  I know you to be a people’s man.  We have all watched your rise.  We have all marvelled at it.”

“A Socialist statesman in the stiffest-necked country of Europe,” Selingman muttered.  “Marvelled at it, indeed!”

“I am where I am,” Maxendorf declared, “because the world is governed by laws, and in the main they are laws of justice and right.  The people of my country fifty years ago were as deep in the mire as the people of your country to-day.  Their liberation has already dawned.  That is why I stand where I do.  Your people, alas! are still dwellers in the caves.  The moment for you has not yet arrived.  When I heard that Maraton had come to England, I changed all my plans.  I said to myself—­’ I will go to Maraton and I will show him how he may lead his people to the light.’  And then I heard other things.”

“Continue,” Maraton said simply.

Maxendorf rose to his feet.  He came a little nearer to Maraton.  He stood looking down at him with folded arms—­a lank, gaunt figure, the angular lines of his body and limbs accentuated by his black clothes and black tie.