Nearer to the shore, indeed at no great distance from the pier-head, lay a white yacht, under steam. A launch left her side, swung around her stern, and headed for the pier.
In a lower gallery, shut off from the public promenades, where thousands of curious holiday-makers jostled one another for a sight of the great yacht, or for a glimpse of those about to join her, a tall man leaned upon the wooden rail and looked out to sea. A girl in while drill, whose pretty face was so pale that fashionable New York might have failed to recognise Zoe Oppner, the millionaire's daughter, stood beside him.
"Though I have been wrong," he said slowly, "in much that I have done, even you will agree that I have been right in this."
He waved his hand towards the fast disappearing squadron.
"Even you. For only you have shown me my errors."
"I did not mean that either. The means you have adopted have often been violent, though the end always was good. But no really useful reform can be brought about in such a way, I am sure."
The man turned his face and fixed his luminous eyes upon hers.
"It may be so," he said; "but even now I see no other way."
Zoe pointed to the almost invisible battleships.
"Ah!" continued Séverac Bablon, "that was a problem of a different kind. In every civilised land there is a power above the throne. Do you think that, unaided, Prussia ever could have conquered gallant France? The people who owe allegiance to the German Emperor are a great people, but, in such an undertaking as war, without the aid of that people who owe allegiance to _me_, they are helpless as a group of children! Had I been in 1870 what I am to-day, the Prussian arms had never been carried into Paris!"
"You mean that a nation, to carry on a war, requires an enormous sum of money?"
"Which can only be obtained from certain sources."
"In part, at least. The finance of Europe is controlled by a group of Jewish houses."
"Amenable to my orders? True. But the outrages with which you reproach me have served to show that when my orders are disobeyed I have power to enforce them! Where I am not respected I am feared. I refused my consent to the loan by aid of which Great Britain's enemies had designed to prosecute a war against her. None of those theatrical displays with which sometimes I have impressed the errant vulgar were necessary. The greatest name in European finance was refused to the transaction--and the Great War died in the hour of its birth!"