to visit.

"Behold!" he exclaimed. "It is a triumph, this! It is a thing to be
remembered! I have brought you two together!"

Maraton's first impressions of Maxendorf were curiously mixed. He saw
before him a tall, lanky figure of a man, dressed in sombre black, a man
of dark complexion, with beardless face and tanned skin plentifully
freckled. His hair and eyes were coal black. He held out his hand to
Maraton, but the smile with which he had welcomed Selingman had passed
from his lips.

"You are not the Maraton I expected some day to meet," he said, a little
bluntly, "and yet I am glad to know you."

Selingman shrugged his shoulders.

"Max--my friend Max, do not be peevish," he begged. "I tell you that he
is the Maraton of whom we have spoken together. I have heard him. I
have been to Sheffield and listened. Don't be prejudiced, Max. Wait."

Maxendorf motioned them to seats and stood with his finger upon the
bell.

"Yes," Selingman assented, "we will drink with you. You breathe of the
Rhine, my friend. I see myself sitting with you in your terraced
garden, drinking Moselle wine out of cut glasses. So it shall be. We
will fall into the atmosphere. What a palace you live in, Max! Is it
because you are an ambassador that they must house you so splendidly?"

Maxendorf glanced around him. He was in one of the best suites in the
hotel, but he had the air of one who was only then, for the first time,
made aware of the fact.

"These things are done for me," he said carelessly. "It seems I have
come before I was expected. The Embassy is scarcely ready for
occupation."

He ordered wine from the waiter and exchanged personal reminiscences
with Selingman until it was brought. Selingman grunted with
satisfaction.

"Two bottles," he remarked. "Come, I like that. A less thoughtful man
would have ordered one first and the other afterwards. The period of
waiting for the second bottle would have destroyed the appetite. Quite
an artist, my friend Max. And the wine--well, we shall see."

He raised the glass to his lips with the air of a connoisseur.

"It will do," he decided, setting it down empty and lighting one of his
black cigars. "Now let us talk. Or shall I, for a change, be silent
and let you talk? To-day my tongue has been busy. Maraton is a silent
man, and he has a silent secretary with great eyes behind which lurk
fancies and dreams the poor little thing has never been encouraged to
speak of. A silent man--Mar