t the facts: his decision
to propose it, and the date--the whole of it! But who could have betrayed
it?'

For the first time since her midnight expedition she felt a sensation of
the full weight of the deed. She heard thunder.

She tried to disperse the growing burden by an inward summons to contempt
of the journalistic profession, but nothing would come. She tried to
minimize it, and her brain succumbed. Her views of the deed last night
and now throttled reason in two contending clutches. The enormity swelled
its dimensions, taking shape, and pointing magnetically at her. She stood
absolutely, amazedly, bare before it.

'Is it of such very great importance?' she said, like one supplicating
him to lessen it.

'A secret of State? If you ask whether it is of great importance to me,
relatively it is of course. Nothing greater. Personally my conscience is
clear. I never mentioned it--couldn't have mentioned it--to any one but
you. I'm not the man to blab secrets. He spoke to me because he knew he
could trust me. To tell you the truth, I'm brought to a dead stop. I
can't make a guess.

I'm certain, from what he said, that he trusted me only with it:
perfectly certain. I know him well. He was in his library, speaking in
his usual conversational tone, deliberately, nor overloud. He stated that
it was a secret between us.'

'Will it affect him?'

'This article? Why, naturally it will. You ask strange questions. A
Minister coming to a determination like that! It affects him vitally. The
members of the Cabinet are not so devoted . . . . It affects us all--the
whole Party; may split it to pieces! There's no reckoning the upset right
and left. If it were false, it could be refuted; we could despise it as a
trick of journalism. It's true. There's the mischief. Tonans did not
happen to call here last night?--absurd! I left later than twelve.'

'No, but let me hear,' Diana said hurriedly, for the sake of uttering the
veracious negative and to slur it over. 'Let me hear . . .' She could not
muster an idea.

Her delicious thrilling voice was a comfort to him. He lifted his breast
high and thumped it, trying to smile. 'After all, it's pleasant being
with you, Tony. Give me your hand--you may: I 'm bothered--confounded by
this morning surprise. It was like walking against the muzzle of a loaded
cannon suddenly unmasked. One can't fathom the mischief it will do. And I
shall be suspected, and can't quite protest myself the spotle