The journalist shrugged his shoulders and glanced at the clock.
"I guess he'll tell me what he chooses and I shall print it," he answered indifferently. "It's all part of the game, of course. I am not exactly chicken enough to expect the truth. All the same, my message will come from the lips of the Chancellor immediately after this wonderful meeting."
"He makes use of you," Bellamy declared, "to throw dust into our eyes and yours."
"Even so," Dorward admitted, "I don't care so long as I get the copy. It's good-bye, I suppose?"
Bellamy nodded.
"I shall go on to Berlin, perhaps, to-morrow," he said. "I can do no more good here. And you?"
"After I've sent my cable I'm off to Belgrade for a week, at any rate," Dorward answered. "I hear the women are forming rifle clubs all through Servia."
Bellamy smiled thoughtfully.
"I know one who'll want a place among the leaders," he murmured.
"Mademoiselle Idiale, I suppose?"
Bellamy assented.
"It's a queer position hers, if you like," he said. "All Vienna raves about her. They throng the Opera House every night to hear her sing, and they pay her the biggest salary which has ever been known here. Three parts of it she sends to Belgrade to the Chief of the Committee for National Defence. The jewels that are sent her anonymously go to the same place, all to buy arms to fight these people who worship her. I tell you, Dorward," he added, rising to his feet and walking to the window, "the patriotism of these people is something we colder races scarcely understand. Perhaps it is because we have never dwelt under the shadow of a conqueror. If ever Austria is given a free hand, it will be no mere war upon which she enters,--it will be a carnage, an extermination!"
Dorward looked once more at the clock and rose slowly to his feet.
"Well," he said, "I mustn't keep His Excellency waiting. Good-bye, and cheer up, Bellamy! Your old country isn't going to turn up her heels yet."
Out he went--long, lank, uncouth, with yellow-stained fingers and hatchet-shaped, gray face--a strange figure but yet a power. Bellamy remained. For a while he seemed doubtful how to pass the time. He stood in front of the window, watching the dispersal of the crowds and the marching by of a regiment of soldiers, whose movements he followed with critical interest, for he, too, had been in the service. He had still a military bearing,--tall, and with complexion inclined to be dusky, a small black moustache, dark eyes, a silent mouth,--a man of many reserves. Even his intimates knew little of him. Nevertheless, his was the reticence which befitted well his profession.