Maraton laughed softly as they passed out into the Palace yard.
Selingman had the air of one who has achieved a personal triumph as, with his arm in Maraton's, he led him towards the man whom they had come to visit.
"Behold!" he exclaimed. "It is a triumph, this! It is a thing to be remembered! I have brought you two together!"
Maraton's first impressions of Maxendorf were curiously mixed. He saw before him a tall, lanky figure of a man, dressed in sombre black, a man of dark complexion, with beardless face and tanned skin plentifully freckled. His hair and eyes were coal black. He held out his hand to Maraton, but the smile with which he had welcomed Selingman had passed from his lips.
"You are not the Maraton I expected some day to meet," he said, a little bluntly, "and yet I am glad to know you."
"Max--my friend Max, do not be peevish," he begged. "I tell you that he is the Maraton of whom we have spoken together. I have heard him. I have been to Sheffield and listened. Don't be prejudiced, Max. Wait."
Maxendorf motioned them to seats and stood with his finger upon the bell.
"Yes," Selingman assented, "we will drink with you. You breathe of the Rhine, my friend. I see myself sitting with you in your terraced garden, drinking Moselle wine out of cut glasses. So it shall be. We will fall into the atmosphere. What a palace you live in, Max! Is it because you are an ambassador that they must house you so splendidly?"
Maxendorf glanced around him. He was in one of the best suites in the hotel, but he had the air of one who was only then, for the first time, made aware of the fact.
"These things are done for me," he said carelessly. "It seems I have come before I was expected. The Embassy is scarcely ready for occupation."
He ordered wine from the waiter and exchanged personal reminiscences with Selingman until it was brought. Selingman grunted with satisfaction.
"Two bottles," he remarked. "Come, I like that. A less thoughtful man would have ordered one first and the other afterwards. The period of waiting for the second bottle would have destroyed the appetite. Quite an artist, my friend Max. And the wine--well, we shall see."
He raised the glass to his lips with the air of a connoisseur.