"I think so, for the same reason," responded the premier of the Browns. "They say it is good business. It means prosperity and progress for both countries."
"After all, a soldier comes out the hero of the great peace movement," concluded the premier of the Grays. "A soldier took the tricks with our own cards. Old Partow was the greatest statesman of us all."
"No doubt of that!" agreed the premier of the Browns. "It's a sentiment to which every premier of ours who ever tried to down him would have readily subscribed!"
The every-day statesman smiles when he sees the people smile and grows angry when they grow angry. Now and then appears an inscrutable genius who finds out what is brewing in their brains and brings it to a head. He is the epoch maker. Such an one was that little Corsican, who gave a stagnant pool the storm it needed, until he became overfed and mistook his ambition for a continuation of his youthful prescience.
Marta had yet to bear the shock of Westerling's death. After learning the manner of it she went to her room, where she spent a haunted, sleepless night. The morning found her still tortured by her visualization of the picture of him, irresolute as the mob pressed around the Gray headquarters.
"It is as if I had murdered him!" she said. "I let him make love to me—I let my hand remain in his once—but that was all, Lanny. I—I couldn't have borne any more. Yet that was enough—enough!"
"But we know now, Marta," Lanstron pleaded, "that the premier of the Grays held Westerling to a compact that he should not return alive if he lost. He could not have won, even though you had not helped us against him. He would only have lost more lives and brought still greater indignation on his head. His fate was inevitable—and he was a soldier."
But his reasoning only racked her with a shudder.
"If he had only died fighting!" Marta replied. "He died like a rat in a trap and I—I set the trap!"