"Nonsense, my dear," said her spouse, patting one plump shoulder.
Dodge had been scrutinizing the legend on the pasteboard.
"This is his Highness's most rigidly official card. Yes, sir, you will have to see him alone. But don't commit yourself by the faintest hint. We have as yet received no instructions from Washington."
"Why, what was that great bunch of cables that came this morning?" asked the lady, with childlike eyes.
Todd grinned toward his secretary, who now cast a grinless and apprehensive look in the direction of Pierre. Dodge answered for the office, "Those related to an entirely different matter, Mrs. Todd, a personal matter. Your husband, Minister Todd, has had no instructions with regard to this war just begun."
Pierre, reddening slightly, beckoned Gwendolen across the room. They stood staring out across the wide brown lawn. Mr. Todd and his assistant left the room together. Above the Buddhist garment she was desecrating, Mrs. Todd murmured plaintively, "I've known it all along,—though Count Breakitoff in Washington assured me it could not come. I was certain that just as soon as I got over here the horrid thing would break out. Just suppose the Russians capture Tokio! They boast already that they will dictate terms of peace in Tokio before next Christmas day, and the Russian troops are like wild beasts." Here she gave a shudder, and raised her voice. "Oh, Gwendolen, why did we leave Washington, or even our peaceful Western home? I'd give ten thousand dollars to be set down right now in a good Christian wheat-field. This is awful, simply awful!"
"And I think it glorious, simply glorious!" sang Gwendolen from the window. "Already the prospect tingles in my veins. It is better than a coming-out party, better than auto-mobiling on a road of green glass! I feel that delicious, tragic, matinée feeling I used to have as a child, just as the curtain starts to rise."
"And you are not afraid something is going to happen?" asked Mrs. Todd.
"I'm only afraid that something isn't going to happen," returned the intrepid one.
Pierre sauntered toward the hearth. "I come of a fighting race, yet now I share Madame's views rather than those of her spirited daughter. This war means a new gulf between Yuki and me."