“I thought I saw something in Charles's face,” he said reflectively, looking back through the open door towards the stairs where Charles had nodded farewell to them. “So the Emperor is here, in Dantzig?”
He turned towards Sebastian, who stood with a stony face.
“Which means war,” he said.
“It always means war,” replied Sebastian in a tired voice. “Is he again going to prove himself stronger than any?”
“Some day he will make a mistake,” said D'Arragon cheerfully. “And then will come the day of reckoning.”
“Ah!” said Sebastian, with a shake of the head that seemed to indicate an account so one-sided that none could ever liquidate it. “You are young, monsieur. You are full of hope.”
“I am not young—I am thirty-one—but I am, as you say, full of hope. I look to that day, Monsieur Sebastian.”
“And in the mean time?” suggested the man who seemed but a shadow of someone standing apart and far away from the affairs of daily life.
“In the mean time one must play one's part,” returned D'Arragon, with his almost inaudible laugh, “whatever it may be.”
There was no foreboding in his voice; no second meaning in the words. He was open and simple and practical, like the life he led.