As we stood, with small opportunity and perhaps less inclination for much conversation, my eyes chanced to turn toward the main entrance door of the East Room. I saw, pushing through, a certain page, a young boy of good family, who was employed by Mr. Calhoun as messenger. He knew me perfectly well, as he did almost every one else in Washington, and with precocious intelligence his gaze picked me out in all that throng.
"Is that for me?" I asked, as he extended his missive.
"Yes," he nodded. "Mr. Calhoun told me to find you and to give you this at once."
I turned to Elisabeth. "If you will pardon me?" I said. She made way for me to pass to a curtained window, and there, turning my back and using such secrecy as I could, I broke the seal.
The message was brief. To be equally brief I may say simply that it asked me to be ready to start for Canada that night on business connected with the Department of State! Of reasons or explanations it gave none.
I turned to Elisabeth and held out the message from my chief. She looked at it. Her eyes widened. "Nicholas!" she exclaimed.
I looked at her in silence for a moment. "Elisabeth," I said at last, "I have been gone on this sort of business long enough. What do you say to this? Shall I decline to go? It means my resignation at once."
I hesitated. The heart of the nation and the nation's life were about me. Our state, such as it was, lay there in that room, and with it our problems, our duties, our dangers. I knew, better than most, that there were real dangers before this nation at that very hour. I was a lover, yet none the less I was an American. At once a sudden plan came into my mind.
"Elisabeth," said I, turning to her swiftly, "I will agree to nothing which will send me away from you again. Listen, then—" I raised a hand as she would have spoken. "Go home with your Aunt Betty as soon as you can. Tell your father that to-night at six I shall be there. Be ready!"
"What do you mean?" she panted. I saw her throat flutter.