"My dear friend," he said earnestly, "your safe conduct, if ever I
signed it, would be to the other world. Frankly, we find you rather a
nuisance. We would be better pleased if your Party were in office, and
you with your knees tucked under a desk at Downing Street, attending to
your official business in your official place. Who gave you this roving
commission, eh? Who sent you to talk common sense to the Balkan States,
and how the mischief did you get wind of our little meeting here?"

"Ah!" Hunterleys replied, "I expect you really know all these things."

Selingman, with his feet planted firmly upon the pavement, took a fresh
cigar from his waistcoat pocket, bit off the end and lit it.

"My friend Hunterleys," he continued, "I am enjoying this brief
interchange of confidences. Circumstances have made me, as you see, a
politician, a schemer if you like. Nature meant me to be one of the
frankest, the most truthful, the best-hearted of men. I detest the
tortuous ways of the old diplomacy. The spoken word pleases me best.
That is why I like a few minutes' conversation with the enemy, why I
love to stand here and talk to you with the buttons off our foils. We
are scheming against you and your country, and you know it, and we shall
win. We can't help but win--if not to-day, to-morrow. Your country has
had a marvellously long run of good luck, but it can't last for ever."

Hunterleys smiled.

"Well," he observed, "there's nothing like confidence. If you are so
sure of success, why couldn't you choose a cleaner way to it than by
tampering with our ally?"

Selingman patted his companion on the shoulder.

"Listen, my friend," he said, "there are no such things as allies. An
alliance between two countries is a dead letter so soon as their
interests cease to be identical. Now Austria is our ally because she is
practically Germany. We are both mid-Continental Powers. We both need
the same protection. But England and France! Go back only fifty years,
my dear Hunterleys, and ask yourself--would any living person, living
now and alive then, believe in the lasting nature of such an unnatural
alliance? Wherever you look, in every quarter of the globe, your
interests are opposed. You robbed France of Egypt. She can't have wholly
forgotten. You dominate the Mediterranean through Gibraltar, Malta, and
Cyprus. What does she think of that, I wonder? Isn't a humiliation for
her when she does stop to think of it? You've a thousand y