“Go back to your unfortunate master, and tell him that when he can send me a public envoy, in the light of day, to ask for peace, and to undertake the fulfilment of the pledges which his Ministers have broken, I will grant his request.”
CHAPTER XI
WHO SMOKED THE GREGORIDES BRAND
I left the presence of the Japanese Emperor deeply disheartened.
It is true I had myself foretold this failure, and that his Japanese majesty and his advisers had been good enough to compliment me in almost extravagant terms on the energy and resourcefulness I had shown in baffling the enemies of peace.
But I am unaccustomed to defeat, no matter what are the odds against me, and I felt that the first point in the game had been scored against by the formidable woman whose beauty and strangely composite character had fascinated me, even while I was countermining her.
For my work was not yet over. Indeed, it had but just begun.