"To be candid, my boy," murmured the minister, still with eyelids drooped, "your penchant for Miss Onda was already known to me. A ship is a huge floating laboratory of social gossip. Touch land, voilà, and the germs fly. My attaché, Monsieur Mouquin, chanced to witness your meeting with Papa Onda. He saw your rejection, and the manner in which your betrothed was heartlessly abducted. We—that is, Mouquin and myself—have even ventured to speculate upon possibilities, diplomatic possibilities in the interest of France, that may be lying dormant in your continued—er—friendship with the charming Miss Onda. At the axis of each new twig of history, Monsieur, sits the love of a woman."
"I—I trust that I do not clearly understand your Excellency," said Pierre, fighting down, as he spoke, a whole swarm of unsavory intuitions.
The count gave a small, resigned sigh, turned slightly in his chair, and tapped with one white hand his heap of opened letters. "Several of these documents suggest the appointment of a certain young Monsieur Le Beau to office in the French Legation at Tokio. The old Duc de St. Cyr is writer of one."
"Monsieur le Duc is my great-uncle, and my friend," said Pierre.
"You will realize that it becomes my duty to acquaint myself with the calibre of such an applicant, of a youth so highly recommended, and especially at a time when relations between our country and Japan are slightly—er—neuralgic."
"I have no previous record in civil service, but I believe I could do something for France."
"Ah, that is just the point!" said the count, with more eagerness than he had yet showed. "To serve France,—that is our whole concern. You have had no training, it is true; yet you have already a weapon that old and tried diplomats might weep for. I refer, as you conjecture, to your friendship with Mademoiselle Onda, daughter of Tetsujo Onda, and ward, in a sense, of his Highness Prince Haganè."
Pierre, in a flash, was upon his feet. Cigarette ashes tumbled from the folds of his waistcoat. He hurled a newly lighted tube into the fire. "You, sir," he began, with evident effort to control his voice, "you, sir, are experienced, and I am ignorant; you are calm and I am impetuous,—perhaps I should listen courteously to what you wish to say; but I believe it impossible for me to do so. I love this girl as a man loves the woman whom he desires to make his honored wife. In England, where I went to school, I learned ideas, stricter perhaps than Parisian conceptions, of the sacredness and the responsibility of marriage. This girl is a thing of snow. No tie could be too strong, no sacrament too safe, for pledging my fidelity. You see, I could not listen."
The count, as the young man was speaking, gazed steadily into the fire. His face remained as expressionless as a leaf. Pierre, striding here and there in his agitation, came back at length to the mantel, and stood still. The count spoke slowly.
"It is far better for France and for you that I speak my mind fully; yet, because you are ignorant and impetuous, you cannot, as you say, listen in decent reserve. It is ever so with youth."