If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay
green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring
to conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole
harvest of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other
hand, this is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will
discover the roots of the flowers soon enough.

Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had
witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic,
they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity,
to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his
own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of
the new presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct
opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted
in his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner)
represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which
is the language of diplomacy, and means war.

For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and
it was their business to be found where the carcass is.

"The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be
in one place at a time," Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years
his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had
rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that
place where their services were urgently needed.

"If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during
a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are."
Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,