Orme was amazed to think how he had failed to piece the facts together. The rumors of important international negotiations; the sudden but not serious illness of the Secretary; his temporary retirement from Washington to Chicago, to be near his favorite physician—for weeks the papers had been full of these incidents.
When South Americans and Japanese combined to hinder the signing of mysterious papers, he should have realized that the matter was not of private, but of public importance. But the true significance of the events into which he had been drawn had escaped his logical mind. It had never occurred to him that such a series of plots, frequent though they might be in continental Europe, could ever be attempted in a country like the United States. And then, he had actually thought of little besides the girl and her needs.
He glanced at her now, but her gaze was fixed on the scene before them. The brightness of her eyes and her quickened breathing told him how intense was her interest.
Across the table from the Secretary of State sat a younger man. His breast glittered with decorations, and his bearing and appearance had all the stiffness of the high-born Teuton.
Of the men who stood behind the two seated figures, some were young, some were old, but all were weighted with the gravity of a great moment. Orme inferred that they were secretaries and attachés.
And now pens scratched on paper. The Secretary of State and the German Ambassador—for Orme knew that it must be he—were signing documents, apparently in duplicate, for they exchanged papers after signing and repeated the action. So these were the papers which at the last hour Orme had restored; and this was the scene which his action had made possible—all for the sake of a girl.
And when the last pen-stroke had been completed and the seated men raised their eyes and looked at each other—looked at each other with the responsible glance of men who have made history—at that moment the girl whispered to Orme: “Come,” and silently he followed her back to the room in which he had first awaited her.
“Oh, Girl,” he whispered, as she turned and faced him, “Oh, Girl, I am so glad!”
She smiled. “Please wait for a moment.”
When she had disappeared he repictured the scene they had just witnessed. With all its absence of pomp, it had left with him an impression that could never be effaced.