ed him with having let them be merged in his one
noble idea.

He furnished me with statistics. They had laid down so many miles of
railways, used so many engines of British construction. They had taught
the natives to use and to value sewing-machines and European costumes.
So many hundred of English younger sons had gone to make their fortunes
and, incidentally, to enlighten the Esquimaux--so many hundreds of
French, of Germans, Greeks, Russians. All these lived and moved in
harmony, employed, happy, free labourers, protected by the most rigid
laws. Man-eating, fetich-worship, slavery had been abolished, stamped
out. The great international society for the preservation of Polar
freedom watched over all, suggested new laws, modified the old. The
country was unhealthy, but not to men of clean lives--_hominibus bonae
voluntatis_. It asked for no others.

"I have had to endure much misrepresentation. I have been called
names," the Duc said.

The figure of the lady danced before my eyes, lithe, supple--a statue
endued with the motion of a serpent. I seemed to see her sculptured
white hand pointing to the closed door.

"Ah, yes," I said, "but one knows the people that call you names."

"Well, then," he answered, "it is your task to make them know the truth.
Your nation has so much power. If it will only realise."

"I will do my best," I said.

I saw the apotheosis of the Press--a Press that makes a State Founder
suppliant to a man like myself. For he had the tone of a deprecating
petitioner. I stood between himself and a people, the arbiter of the
peoples, of the kings of the future. I was nothing, nobody; yet here I
stood in communion with one of those who change the face of continents.
He had need of me, of the power that was behind me. It was strange to be
alone in that room with that man--to be there just as I might be in my
own little room alone with any other man.

I was not unduly elated, you must understand. It was nothing to me. I
was just a person elected by some suffrage of accidents. Even in my own
eyes I was merely a symbol--the sign visible of incomprehensible power.

"I will do my best," I said.

"Ah, yes, do," he said, "Mr. Churchill told me how nicely you can do
such things."

I said that it was very kind of Mr. Churchill. The tension of the
conversation was relaxed. The Duc asked if I had yet seen my aunt.

"I had forgotten her," I said.

"Oh, you must see her," he said; "she is a most remark