"The Czar on his way to the railway station," Bellamy remarked.

The broad avenue was suddenly thronged with a mass of soldiery -
guardsmen of the most famous of Austrian regiments, brilliant in
their white uniforms, their flashing helmets. The small brougham
with its great black horses was almost hidden within a ring of
naked steel. Dorward, an American to the backbone and a bitter
democrat, thrust out his under-lip.

"The Anointed of the Lord!" he muttered.

Far away from some other quarter came the same roar of voices,
muffled yet insistent, charged with that faint, exciting timbre
which seems always to live in the cry of the multitude.

"The Emperor," declared Bellamy. "He goes to the West station."

The commotion had passed. The crowds in the street below were on
the move, melting away now with a muffled trampling of feet and a
murmur of voices. The two men turned from their window back into
the room. Dorward commenced to roll a cigarette with yellow-stained,
nervous fingers, while Bellamy threw himself into an easy-chair with
a gesture of depression.

"So it is over, this long-talked-of meeting," he said, half to
himself, half to Dorward. "It is over, and Europe is left to wonder."

"They were together for scarcely more than an hour," Dorward murmured.

"Long enough," Bellamy answered. "That little room in the Palace,