The two men chatted for some time on things in general, the conversation veering to the Squadron. The Ambassador thought the other seemed somewhat distrait. At two the affair ended and the carriages drew up to the windy porte-cochère. There was a confidential matter which the Ambassador wished to speak of with his host. He had mentioned it, but no fitting opportunity had occurred. At the door the Admiral recalled it, suggesting with a quizzical reference to the other's American fondness for late hours that, as his house was on the way, the Ambassador stop there, while they had their talk over a cigar. The latter, therefore, departed in the Admiral's carriage, and Daunt drove alone to the Embassy, directing the coachman to go in a half-hour for his chief. In the past three days Daunt had fought a constant battle. Every feature of that night at Nikko was stamped indelibly on his mind. The passionate resentment, the agony of protest that had come to him at the ball, when he had received the torn fragments of his letter to Barbara, returned in double force, opposing a strange, new sense of shame that his thought should follow her even into the tragic shadow where she now dwelt. Yet--for fancy will not be denied--his brain would again and again circle the same somber treadmill: _We have done those things which we ought not to have done!_ He seemed to hear her say it on the dark hillside. Her voice had had that in it which, against his will, had thrilled him. What had she done that she regretted? She had spoken of the day in the cave at Enoshima--had seemed to wish him to believe that she had not then been acting a part. Could anything have happened in that one day's interval so utterly to change her? She had been unhappy, for he had surprised her weeping. What was it she had wished to "confess?" So to-night his gloomy reflections ran--to their submerging wave of self-reproach. He let himself into the Chancery with his latch-key, to get his evening's mail. A telegram had been laid on his desk. It was a cipher from Washington, and he opened the safe at once and from the inner drawer took out the official code books. He sat down at one of the desks and began the decoding of the text. For a time he worked mechanically--as it were, with but one-half of his brain--tracing each group of figures in the bulky volume, transposing by the secret key, dragging, in the complicated process, sense and coherency from the meaningless digits. Then he sat staring at the result: