"Thought I'd seen you somewhere before," was the prompt acknowledgment.
"You're in the Diplomatic Service, aren't you?"

Norgate admitted the fact and suggested a drink. The two men settled down
to exchange confidences over a whisky and soda. Baring looked around him
with some disapprobation.

"I can't really stick this place," he asserted. "If it weren't for--for
some of the people here, I'd never come inside the doors. It's a rotten
way of spending one's time. You play, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, I play," Norgate admitted, "but I rather agree with you. How
wonderfully well Mrs. Benedek is looking, isn't she!"

Baring withdrew his admiring eyes from her vicinity.

"Prettiest and smartest woman in London," he declared.

"By-the-by, is she English?" Norgate asked.

"A mixture of French, Italian, and German, I believe," Baring replied.
"Her husband is Benedek the painter, you know."

"I've heard of him," Norgate assented. "What are you doing now?"

"I've had a job up in town for a week or so, at the Admiralty," Baring
explained. "We are examining the plans of a new--but you wouldn't be
interested in that."

"I'm interested in anything naval," Norgate assured him.

"In any case, it isn't my job to talk about it," Baring continued
apologetically. "We've just got a lot of fresh regulations out. Any one
would think we were going to war to-morrow."

"I suppose war isn't such an impossible event," Norgate remarked. "They
all say that the Germans are dying to have a go at you fellows."

Baring grinned.

"They wouldn't have a dog's chance," he declared. "That's the only
drawback of having so strong a navy. We don't stand any chance of
getting a fight."

"You'll have all you can do to keep up, judging by the way they talk in
Germany," Norgate observed.

"Are you just home from there?"

Norgate nodded. "I am at the Embassy in Berlin, or rather I have been,"
he replied. "I am just home on six months' leave."

"And that's your real impression?" Baring enquired eagerly. "You really
think that they mean to have a go at us?"

"I think there'll be a war soon," Norgate confessed. "It probably won't
commence at sea, but you'll have to do your little lot, without a doubt."

Baring gazed across the room. There was a hard light in his eyes.

"Sounds beastly, I suppose," he muttered, "but I wish to God it would
come! A war would give us all a shaking up--put us in our right places.
We all seem to go on drifting any way