“Ah,” said the baroness, looking reflectively at Denise's telegram, which she still held in her hand, “I thought he was.”
Then that placid man, the Baron Henri de Mélide, came into the room, and shook hands in the then novel English fashion, looking at his lifelong friend with a dull and apathetic eye.
“From the frontier?” he inquired.
Lory laughed curtly. He had returned from that Last Frontier, where each one of us shall inevitably be asked “Si monsieur a quelque chose à déclarer?”
“I shall give you ten minutes for your secrets, and then luncheon will be ready,” said the baroness, quitting the room.
And Lory told his friend those things which were not for a woman's hearing.
At luncheon both men were suspiciously cheerful; and, doubtless, their companion read them like open books. Immediately after coffee Lory took his leave.
“I leave Paris to-night,” he said, with his old cheerfulness. “This war is not over yet. We have not the shadow of a chance of winning, but we shall perhaps be able to show the world that France can still fight.”
Which prophecy assuredly came true.