We will
withhold our fleet from bombarding the French towns. England could do no
more than deal with our fleet if she were at war. She shall do the same
without raising a finger.' No country could refuse so sane and
businesslike an offer, especially a country which will at once count upon
its fingers how much it will save by not going to war."

"And afterwards?"

The Prince shrugged his shoulders. "Afterwards is inevitable."

"Please go on," she insisted.

"We shall occupy the whole of the coast from Antwerp to Havre. The
indemnity which France and Russia will pay us will make us the mightiest
nation on earth. We shall play with England as a cat with a mouse, and
when the time comes.... Well, perhaps that will do," the Prince
concluded, smiling.

Anna was silent for several moments.

"I am a woman, you know," she said simply, "and this sounds, in a way,
terrible. Yet for months I have felt it coming."

"There is nothing terrible about it," the Prince replied, "if you keep
the great principles of progress always before you. If a million or so
of lives are sacrificed, the great Germany of the future, gathering
under her wings the peoples of the world, will raise them to a pitch
of culture and contentment and happiness which will more than atone
for the sacrifices of to-day. It is, after all, the future to which we
must look."

A telephone bell rang at the Prince's elbow. He listened for a moment
and nodded.

"An urgent visitor demands a moment of my time," he said, rising.

"I have taken already too much," Anna declared, "but I felt it was time
that I heard the truth. They fence with me so in Berlin, and, believe me,
Prince Herschfeld, in Vienna the Emperor is almost wholly ignorant of
what is planned."

The door was opened behind them. The Prince turned around. A young man
had ushered in Herr Selingman. For a moment the latter looked steadily at
Anna. Then he glanced at the Ambassador as though questioningly.

"You two must have met," the Prince murmured.

"We have met," Anna declared, smiling, as she made her way towards the
door, "but we do not know one another. It is best like that. Herr
Selingman and I work in the same army--"

"But I, madame, am the sergeant," Selingman interrupted, with a low bow,
"whilst you are upon the staff."

She laughed as she made her adieux and departed. The door closed heavily
behind her. Selingman came a little further into the room.

"You have read your dispatches th