"But I thought you came to say good-by?"
He was going on a few weeks' tour on this side, he said.
Oh, the lightening in her face. He seemed bent only on teasing her a little, in withholding the answer to her quick: "Whereabouts are you going to tour?" When she had waited for the answer that didn't come she said: "You're afraid I'll tell. Everybody's afraid every one else will tell. Everybody's changed."
"Not Miss Greta, surely?"
"Greta as much as anybody," she flung out. And then, as though she regretted that ebullition, she added hastily: "I suppose I mustn't ask you—what next, after the few weeks' tour."
"Yes, you may ask that," Napier said, the smile going out of his eyes. "France next."
They parted with no hint from him of the fact that one result of his second visit to Washington had been an extension of the highly successful unofficial mission.
For Taylor had been right in saying the old sharp demarcations between government departments were being erased. More and more diplomacy impinged on the twin provinces of trade and world finance. The astute were beginning to see that the problem of munitions was own brother to food supply, which in its turn was a matter of transport. In view of the now frequent sinkings of Allied ships, not only South American meat, wheat, but South American tonnage, might become of supreme importance in a protracted war. Unfortunately, German influence had attained dangerous proportions in those remote, fertile areas below the equator. Napier and another unofficial British envoy received orders from home to proceed to Rio on instructions from the British Ambassador at Washington.
He returned to New York early in May, to find the country in a state of excitement such as the United States had not known since the assassination of Lincoln. Some twenty-four hours before, the Germans had torpedoed the Lusitania. Fifteen hundred lives had been sacrificed. The effect on Napier was the effect on many. The Lusitania dead recruited tens of thousands.
On the afternoon of the day of his arrival in New York, Napier returned to his hotel, having engaged passage to England by the next ship.