"I've come to be grateful for George," said Napier, fervently.
"That may be, but nobody can call him exciting."
Napier assured her that was the precise ground of his gratitude.
The assurance went unheeded. She was still simmering with the excitement of her interview.
"Now the President _is_ exciting. Perfectly wonderful, _I_ call him. And perfectly splendid about peace, though he _did_ say"--the little pucker gathered between her brows--"he _did_ say we might have to fight for it. I forgot to ask him what he meant by that. I shall be dying to hear what you think about him. Couldn't we"--she hesitated, and then as Napier did not make the hoped-for suggestion she made it herself--"couldn't we meet?"
"Nothing I 'd like better--if you're not with--if you're here with your mother."
No, her mother was still in New York with the children. That was one reason Nan was having to go back. For Mrs. Ellis was leaving on Saturday for California. "Father needs her, and she says I don't, now I have Greta."
"Greta is dining out to-night." She scanned his face with an expression which, in the retrospect, comforted him even more than to remember her delight at the arrangement finally made. He was to call for her. "Not later than half-past seven," because she had the packing to do before bed--time. Yes, they were going to New York by the early train. Greta had to be in New York to-morrow night for a meeting.
"How odd you should guess! But _isn't_ it fair-minded for her to go to a pro-Ally lecture by an Englishman?"
He smiled faintly as he hurried back to the anteroom.
On the way out, after his interview with the President, Napier could not fail to see among the waiting crowd, composed chiefly of men, the very striking figure of a yellow-haired woman in deep conversation with a certain senator much at the moment in the public eye. But Miss von Schwarzenberg did not leave Mr. Napier's recognition to chance.
"Oh, here you are!" She turned her back on the important person and joined Napier with as much effrontery as though the meeting were what she so successfully gave the impression it was, a matter mutually arranged. In face of the absence on his part of the least response, she walked on at his side. "I'm the only one here in all this throng," she said in a confidential tone, "who isn't waiting to see the President."