- tary of State, and it is upon your affairs that we
met."
Volkonsky shifted uneasily in his chair. These terrible Americans. They outraged all diplomacy.
"And may I ask the result of that conference?" he inquired.
"Certainly. That if you will agree to go quietly, you may."
Volkonsky drew himself up. Pembroke remembered a similar gesture and attitude in a country road, some years before.
"And if I decline?"
Pembroke nodded gravely.
"Then the President, through the State Department will feel compelled to notify your government of the correspondence of yours which came into the hands of the Department, and was upon my request presented to the Foreign Affairs sub-committee. This is enough, you understand, for your recall, and perhaps dismissal. But I thought proper to inform the President of what I knew personally regarding you—and I also informed him that your wife was entitled to some consideration of which you were totally unworthy. So you had best take advantage of the President's leniency in allowing you to go, without a peremptory demand for your recall."
"You perhaps have gone too fast," answered Volkonsky in a quiet voice—for the whole conversation had been conducted in a conversational key. "You are no doubt aware that the United States Government is bound by some obligations to
