Deane rose to his feet a little
stiffly.

"Perhaps you are right," he said, "and yet I am not sure."

"A little reflection will, I think, convince you," Phineas Duge said
quietly. "Your retention of that document means that you take sides in
the civil war which seems hanging over my country. Further than that,
it also means--and although it pains me to say so, Mr. Deane, I assure I
you say it without any ill-feeling--a serious interruption to
your career."

The ambassador was silent for several moments.

"Mr. Duge," he said, "I am inclined to admit that up to a certain point
you have reason on your side. It is true that I am guarding the document
in question for Norris Vine, and it is also true that in doing so I am
perhaps departing a little from the strict propriety which my position
demands. I will therefore return to him the document, but I should like
you to understand that with every desire to retain your good will, I
shall give Mr. Vine such advice with regard to the use of it as seems to
me, as a private individual and a citizen of the United States,
judicious."

Phineas Duge took up his hat.

"As to that," he said, "I have nothing to say, beyond this. However
things may shape themselves in the immediate future, my influence will,
I believe, still prove something to be reckoned with on the other side.
That influence, Mr. Deane, I use for those who show themselves
my friends."

The two men parted with some restraint. Deane, after a few minutes'
hesitation, went to the telephone and called up Vine at his club.

"I want to talk to you, Vine, at once," he said. "Can you come round?"

"In ten minutes," was the answer.

"I shall wait for you," the ambassador answered, ringing off.

CHAPTER XIX

THE CRISIS

In a small, shabbily furnished room at the top of a tall apartment
house, Virginia was living through what seemed to her, as indeed it was,
a grim little tragedy. On the table before her was her little purse,
turned inside out, and by its side a few, a very few coins. The roll of
notes, which she had not changed, and which formed the larger part of
her little capital, was gone, hopelessly, absolutely gone. It was
nothing less than a disaster this, which she was forced to face. She had
left the purse about in her rooms in Coniston Mansions, or there were
many other places in which an expert thief would have found it a very
easy matter to remove the little bundle and replace it with that roll o