"You are a great politician, my dear Baron, and you say a thing like that! You amaze me! But of course the whole affair is new to you; you have not thought it out as I have done. Whatever happens in Europe, Russia will maintain the isolation for which geography and temperament have marked her out. She would not stir one finger to help France. Why should she? What could France give her in return? What would she gain by plunging into an exhausting war? To the core of his heart and the tips of his finger-nails the Muscovite is selfish! Then, again, consider this. You are not going to ruin France as you did before; you are going to establish a new dynasty, and not waste the land or exact a mighty tribute. Granted that sentiments of friendship exist between Russia and France, do you not think that Russia would not sooner see France a monarchy? Do you think that she would stretch out her little finger to aid a tottering republic and keep back a king from the throne of France? _Mon Dieu!_ Never!" Mr. Sabin's face was suddenly illuminated. A fire flashed in his dark eyes, and a note of fervent passion quivered lifelike in his vibrating voice. His manner had all the abandon of one pleading a great cause, nursed by a great heart. He was a patriot or a poet, surely not only a politician or a mere intriguing adventurer. For a moment he suffered his enthusiasm to escape him. Then the mask was as suddenly dropped. He was himself again, calm, convincing, impenetrable. As the echoes of his last interjection died away there was a silence between the two men. It was the Ambassador at last who broke it. He was looking curiously at his companion. "I must confess," he said slowly, "that you have fascinated me! You have done more, you have made me see dreams and possibilities which, set down upon paper, I should have mocked at. Mr. Sabin, I can no longer think of you as a person--you are a personage! We are here alone, and I am as secret as the grave; be so kind as to lift the veil of your incognito. I can no longer think of you as Mr. Sabin. Who are you?" Mr. Sabin smiled a curious smile, and lit a cigarette from the open box before him. "That," he said, pushing the box across the table, "you may know in good time if, in commercial parlance, we deal. Until that point is decided, I am Mr. Sabin. I do not even admit that it is an incognito." "And yet," the Ambassador said, with a curious lightening of his face, as though recollection had suddenly been vouchsafed to him, "I fancy that if I were to call you----" Mr. Sabin's protesting hand was stretched across the table. "Excuse me," he interrupted, "let it remain between us as it is now! My incognito is a necessity for the present. Let it continue to be--Mr. Sabin! Now answer me. All has been said that can be said between us. What is your opinion?"