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"What're you going to name him? Nicholas of course. He's your first."

"Well, my wife wants me to call him Nicholas." It seemed silly, to carry on a conversation like this. He couldn't imagine Horace Locke caring whether the boy was named Nicholas or Julius Caesar. Nicholas Baker was wondering whether it would be proper, and politic, to ask for the afternoon off when Mr. Locke took him by the arm and led him to his desk, so that the others in the room were excluded from what next he had to say.

"Nick," he asked, his long, handsome face suddenly sober, "did you hear the news?"

"No. What news?"

"The President had a stroke yesterday. In Wichita. Apoplexy."

"No!"

"Yes. It isn't generally known yet. I heard it from the Undersecretary last night at dinner."

"Do you think it's serious?"

"Apoplexy is always serious."

"I wasn't thinking of that, exactly. I was thinking of the League." Nicholas Baker had a theory, which he discreetly pushed when the moment was right, that the League would fail unless it was led by the United States, and there would be another war. He had another theory. It was too radical to voice openly. He believed that all the countries in the world should be formed into one government, as all the states were bound together in the United States.