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Updated: May 6, 2025
Maxendorf was sitting there alone, smoking a cigarette over the remnants of an unpretentious feast. He welcomed them without a smile; his aspect, indeed, as he waved his hand towards a chair, was almost forbidding. "What do you want with me, Maraton?" he asked. "They tell me Selingman tells me there was a word you had to say before you press the levers.
What a palace you live in, Max! Is it because you are an ambassador that they must house you so splendidly?" Maxendorf glanced around him. He was in one of the best suites in the hotel, but he had the air of one who was only then, for the first time, made aware of the fact. "These things are done for me," he said carelessly. "It seems I have come before I was expected.
"Chiefly," Maraton replied, "that he is an aristocrat, a diplomatist, and the future ambassador here of a country I do not love." Selingman drained a glass of champagne before he answered. He lit another of his long, thin cigars and smoked furiously. "Aristocrat yes," he assented, "but you do not know Maxendorf. He will be a joy to you, man. Oh, he sees!
Ours is a great meeting. You know Maxendorf?" "By name," Maraton admitted, a little startled. "A profound thinker," Selingman declared, "a mighty thinker, a giant, a pioneer. I tell you that he sees, Maraton. He has pitched his tent upon the hill-top. What do you know of him?"
Lock the door. Turn out the Julia I shall some day rob you of. Hold your head, look into the future. Think! Think! No more words now. They do no good. Come. I stay with Maxendorf. I go with you to the lift." Maxendorf held out his hand. "Selingman is, as usual, right," he confessed. "We are speaking in a great language, Maraton. It is enough for to-night, perhaps.
"They say truly," Maxendorf admitted, "yet these things are by the way. They occupy a little cell of life no more. It is for the people I live and breathe." "For the people of the world," Maraton persisted slowly "for humanity? Is there any difference in your mind, Maxendorf, between the people of one country and the people of another?" Maxendorf never faltered.
Nothing makes so much for happiness. . . . Maraton, where shall I find you to-night?" "In the House of Commons, probably," Maraton replied. "But take my advice. Leave Maxendorf alone for a few days." "We will see we will see," Selingman went on, a little impatiently. "Come, I have nothing to do nothing whatever. I came to London to see you, Maraton. You must put up with me. Work put it away.
Maraton felt suddenly a twinge of something I which was almost compunction. Mr. Foley's face was white and tired. He had the air of a man oppressed with anxieties which he was doing his best to conceal. "If I can," he said, "I should like very much to see Lady Elisabeth. Perhaps I shall be in time after our interview with Maxendorf, or before. I will go home and change, on the chance."
If I believed, Maxendorf if I believed that this fusion, as you call it, of our people could come about in the way you suggest, if I believed that the building up of our prosperity could start again on the real and rational basis of many of your institutions, if I believed this, Maxendorf, no false sentiment would stand in my way. I would risk the eternal shame of the historians.
It took me some time to make up my mind only because I doubted one thing, and one thing alone, in the world. That one thing, Maxendorf, was your good faith." Maxendorf lifted his eyes swiftly. "You doubted me," he repeated. "You're a people's man, I know," Maraton went one, "but here and there one finds queer traits in your character. They say that you are also a patriot and a schemer."
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