refer to my diplomatic conscience."

"And a diplomatic conscience is a minus quantity," she observed.

"What is it you would of me, dear lady?" he asked.

"I would that you should go with me to the French Ambassador, and help
me to explain the--now don't say you won't, Mr. Harleston--"

"My dear Mrs. Clephane, it is--" he began.

"It is _not_ impossible!" she declared. "Why won't you do it?"

"For your sake as well as for my own," he explained. "America and France
are not working together in this matter, and for me to accompany you
would result simply in your being obliged to explain _me_ as well as the
letter, besides leading to endless complications and countless
suspicions. Didn't I expound this last evening?"

"You did--also much more; but I've thought over it almost the whole
night, and I simply must get this miserable letter off my mind. Perhaps
Mrs. Spencer has forestalled me with the Ambassador and has given him
such a tale as will insure my being shown the door; nevertheless I'll
risk it."

"Why don't you get in communication with your friend Madame Durrand,"
Harleston suggested "and have her, if she hasn't done so already,
identify you to the Marquis?"

"I shall, if the Marquis is sceptical. I'll admit that I'm pitiably
foolish, but I don't want Mrs. Durrand to know how I've bungled her
matter until the bungle is corrected."

"I can quite understand," said Harleston gently.

"Oh, I know you are right," she murmured, "yet I'm afraid to go alone."

"Take some other friend with you; some well-known man who can vouch for
your identity."

"I know no one in Washington except the friends at the Shoreham, and
they are not residents here."

"Are you acquainted with any prominent woman?"

"No! I've lived in Europe for years--and while I have met over there
women from Washington it's been only casually. They won't recollect me,
any more than I would them, for purposes of vouchment or
identification."

"Then go alone."

"I will. It is the right thing to do. Yesterday I was thinking that you
had the letter and could return it to me. I waited. Today I can
appreciate your reason for withholding it--likewise the necessity for me
to go to the Ambassador with my story. And I shall tell him the _whole_
story; he may believe it or not as he is inclined. I'm only a volunteer
in this affair, and I've decided that for me the course of discretion
and frank honesty is much wiser than silently fighting back.
Furt