"I saw him here before dinner," I said.
"I promised to walk home with him. Why don't you come along, too? There's nothing of any interest on, and you can smoke in greater comfort at my place. Let's see if we can hunt him out."
Bertrand had sat down late, and we found him finishing his coffee in an almost deserted dining-room. It was still light, however, when we got outside, and we strolled at an easy pace along Millbank to "The Sanctuary." I had not been there since the night nearly three months before when O'Rane's life was broken in two. As we walked, I thought of the other night when Grayle and I met him for the first time, when, too, he had carried Beresford on his own back into the now empty house. He could not but be thinking of it himself, and I hardly knew whether to pity or admire him the more for his unembarrassed way of admitting us to his secret without suffering us to allude to it.
Unlocking the door, he went ahead to turn on the lights, came back to relieve us of our coats and bade us help ourselves from the side-board, while he opened a box of cigars. Perhaps from nervousness he talked rather more than usual and shewed himself unnecessarily solicitous for our comfort; otherwise we might have been sitting, as we occasionally sat ten months before, waiting for Mrs. O'Rane to come back from the theatre.... I confess that I started—I believe we all started—when we heard a taxi draw nearer and nearer, turn out of Millbank and stop at the door. Bertrand and I were facing the room, and we both of us gave a quick glance over our shoulders. O'Rane continued talking unconcernedly, only stopping when the curtain was pushed aside and George came in.
"It's a great thing to have a place where you can be sure of a drink after licensed hours," he remarked contentedly. "I've had no dinner and not much lunch; and I've left the Admiralty this moment. This war's got beyond the joke some people still think it. Don't mind me, Raney, I'm going to fend for myself and eat solidly for the next half-hour. What's the question before the House?"
He seated himself on the arm of my chair with a hunk of bread and cheese in one hand and a tumbler of whiskey and soda in the other. We were talking of the way in which our original intervention on behalf of Belgian neutrality had been overlaid by the nationalist ambitions of Italy in south Austria, France in Alsace-Lorraine, and by the frankly imperialist trend of Russia towards Constantinople and of ourselves towards Mesopotamia and in Africa and the Pacific.
"It may have been wise, it may be necessary," said O'Rane dubiously. "Perhaps you couldn't bring Italy in without promising Trieste and the Trentino, perhaps you couldn't keep Russia in without promising Constantinople."
Bertrand sighed and then yawned.
"I wonder if we've not bitten off more than we can chew," he growled. "I went through the phase of 'crushing Prussian militarism,' cutting up the map of Europe with a pair of scissors.... I hope nobody will put me up against a wall and shoot me, if I now doubt the possibility. I don't believe we can crush Prussian militarism."