BOOK FIVE

CHAPTER ONE

The white yacht sailed gracefully over the dark blue waters of the Mediterranean. She seemed to be moving in response to an inner impulse. This was the sixth day of the cruise, and that morning she had left the harbour at Messina to sail in a southerly course round the eastern shores of Sicily. The sea was calm, and the bows cut so smoothly into the water, that the dividing line between water and metal was as sharp as if it had been ruled with a diamond point on the surface of a mirror.

Diana stood in the bows, her head tossed back and the breeze playing with her curls, the white linen dress clinging to her and outlining breast and leg. From a distance, she might have been taken for the figure of that marble Nike which, in times of old, had been placed at the nose of the Greek warship and had flown forward to victory. But no one was about on this particular morning. She had ship and sea and sunlight to herself, so far as any personal observation was concerned, for the weatherbeaten helmsman and the two Low German sailors keeping the watch had no time to contemplate young ladies at so early an hour, even though, if we except old Mary, Diana was the only woman aboard.

And Diana knew that she was unobserved. She, like her companions, had started off in a spirit of adventure, and had sought nothing but enjoyment out of the voyage, the sprightly talk, the long silences, the laughter. But, alone of all the pleasant company, Diana knew and loved the sea, was under the spell of the dancing waters. She had felt this as soon as she stepped on board at Genoa, and now she was completely won to its moods and enchantments, in storm or calm, radiant at morn, tranquil at noon-tide, lively at sunset, or a murmuring mystery at night. She felt at home among the hawsers and tackle, the life-belts and ropes and masts, the shining brasses, all the paraphernalia of seafaring life. Untiringly she questioned the crew as to this, that, and the other detail she did not understand. She was learning to be an adept in reckoning how many knots they were making, in reading the charts, in calculating the mid pressure, and was becoming weather wise. Yet all this seemed to her no more than a game played upon the surface of the waters. Dark forces were at work within the abysses of her soul. She was lured within the magic circle of this fluid element, to plumb her own depths, dumbly, unseeingly, and to gauge her strength in the eyes of her friends and under the blue dome of the starry night. When such moods of self-contemplation assailed her, she forgot all about logarithms and maps, and allowed herself to penetrate into the mysteries of her own nature. Nowhere were such meditations more fruitful than when she was surrounded by the sea.

As Diana stood in the bows this morning she seemed to form part of the elements around her. The sunshine sparkled from the water as from the surface of a mirror, it was split up into a thousand facets on the ripples, as if the mighty fist of a god had dealt a blow upon the moving mass from which, at the moment of impact, a cascade of light had generated. But the impression upon Diana was different. The radiance and the sea were for her a world divided against itself and seeking reunion through strife; as night fell, the radiance was absorbed into the sea; when day dawned, it arose once more from the bosom of the waters; and this descent and resurrection was reproduced within herself as if she too were part of the living cosmos. The sensation of fettered freedom was strong upon her as the yacht glided through the Mediterranean, for here, and here alone, did night and morning become visible phenomena, superseding the habits of a lifetime, and giving concrete substance to the passage of the hours. The stars, which served to guide the vessel on her course, appeared more pregnant with mystery than those which shone over the houses of a town or even over the trees of a forest. At such moments, Diana became blind to externals, for she yielded herself up entirely to a kind of mystical contemplation. She saw neither birds nor fishes, nor the distant mountains coming slowly into view to starboard, nor the flattened cone shimmering white against the blue sky. Her thoughts were turned inward, while the breeze played fresh and cool upon her skin, the murmur of waters caressed her ears, the brine and the brilliance smote upon her eyes. Oblivious to all exterior happenings, she was only aware of palpitating sensation.

It was for her one of those rare moments of inner solitude which seem absolutely unattainable amid the growing tumult and complication of modern life. Of one thing alone did she become aware as the moments passed and she stood awake while her friends lay wrapped in slumber: that the sky was cloudless over a glittering sea.

CHAPTER TWO

She was roused from her reverie by the sound of rushing water. The men were washing down the decks, and she had to jump lightly on to a coil of ropes in order to escape the flood. It looked like glass as it flowed over the boards and through the scuppers. Diana felt her whole personality invaded by a sensation of cheerful security, of joy, at being absorbed as it were into a moving entity. She smiled serenely, and looked around her at these evidences of a century to which she seemed to be returning from a flight into a primal age. Westward, barely eight miles away, the rugged cliffs of an island rose out of the sea, crowned with what might be—she had no telescope—the Roman Theatre of Taormina. Years ago she had sailed these self-same waters, but she had never had an opportunity of visiting the island before, or of studying its coast-line. The young sailor who was busy swabbing down the deck had hitherto only sailed the Atlantic to and from America. This was his first experience of the Mediterranean, and he could give her none of the information she so eagerly desired. Nor could she consult the charts, for they were in the captain's cabin. The man at the wheel was always chary of words first thing in the morning. No one was about who could tell her what she longed to know. But soon the sound of an electric bell warned her that her friends were beginning to stir below, and she forgot her preoccupation with the landscape in order to guess who the ringer might be. Three times the summons was repeated, short, decisive, peremptory. It must be Scherer; he alone, as owner of the yacht, would venture on so authoritative an expression of urgency. The prince usually rang but once, with deliberation. Franklin's impatience was implied by three short, syncopated trills following close upon each other. The Russian never rang at all, probably, thought Diana, because it smacked too much of the master. She smiled to herself, hoping breakfast might soon be served. Meanwhile she watched the gulls flying overhead, and as she did so she heard footsteps approaching. The soft, slow tread told her that this was the fifth of her friends aboard.

When the plans for the cruise had been concluded, soon after that evening at Scherer's, and Diana had been asked if she knew of anyone else who would fit into the party, her thoughts had naturally flown to Wilhelm, whose lute playing and fanciful imagination would be greatly appreciated during such a voyage. Indeed, Wilhelm had proved so pleasant a companion to all concerned, that Scherer himself was grateful for the young man's presence.

"Good morning, Wilhelm," Diana called to him as he approached. "You are the first to put in an appearance, and yet you come an hour too late. The best of the day is past!"

"What? Breakfast?"

"No, the early hours!"

"But the sun's hardly risen."

"True; still, like a traveller after an hour's tramp, the sun's beginning to feel a trifle hot and weary. The first step into the free morning air when all the rest of the household is asleep, the first footfall to rouse the echoes along the slumbering street—that's over for today. And look, there's Etna!"

"You are cold," said Wilhelm waving his hand to the mountain. "Farewell! Farewell!—Where are we going to land?"

"Herr Scherer said Syracuse."

"At noon?"

"No, later. Perhaps not before evening."

"And there we'll find the tyrant?"

"Say, rather, the ear of Dionysius."

He sat Turkish fashion on a coil of ropes, his eyes blinking in the dazzle of sun and sea. His dreamy nature made him critical of all this clarity and hardness of outline. It seemed to him that the white apparition before him, resting a foot lightly upon a taut bit of cordage and leaning against the brass rail, with the background of blue, was poised in mid air.

"You have a way of talking about the gods as if they were relations of yours, Diana. And now you want to know where Dionysius keeps his ears! What do they matter? A man needs no more than mouth and nose to appreciate Burgundy."

"This morning you have no eyes," she retorted, smiling and poking him playfully with the point of her shoe. "If only you had ears! Then you would have heard what Herr Scherer had to tell us last night about this ear, seeing that this time, may it please you, we are not making for your tutelary deity, but for the tyrant who took the name of the god because—well, because he may have felt a kinship to the gods just as Diana does. And now let's have some breakfast."

So saying she jumped off the rail, pulled Wilhelm to his feet, linked arms with him, and sped down the deck to the dining-room, a place of glass and steel situated on the promenade deck. Taking the seat at the head of the table, she said to the steward, who awaited her orders menu in hand, "Oh, just give us anything you have a mind to, fruit, tea, what you will!"

"Impossible," protested Wilhelm, grasping the menu and measuring it with his fingers. "Eight inches of breakfast can't be walked off! And the spacing between dishes is as close as in the cheap edition of Jean Paul I have downstairs in my cabin. So for today I decree that we choose the even numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and tomorrow we'll eat the uneven."

Thereupon he handed back the card to the steward who went off to get them what they had ordered. As soon as the man was out of earshot, Wilhelm said:

"Have you noticed how the Russian eats?"

"He eats splendidly," said Diana with ostentatious decision, smoothing her table napkin primly over her lap.

"Splendidly! Indeed?" The young man raised a hand in protest. Then with the utmost solemnity, as if the conventions of good manners were his main concern in life, he continued: "Didn't you notice how, last night at dinner, he took a quail in his fingers and bit off its head, smartly and almost savagely, as if he were an ogre dining off a grand duke?"

Diana laughed in spite of herself. She bit heartily into an apple, as she retorted:

"Yes, Wilhelm, smartly and savagely," and she suited her action to the words, biting ferociously into the fruit she held in hand. "I'm not particularly enamoured of this conceited young Russian, and as far as I am concerned he might have stayed at home. But he has the finest teeth I've ever seen biting into anything, and it's only when he attacks his food that you can see them, for he never laughs. Besides, as far as quails are concerned, conventional etiquette permits one to bite their heads off, as you can read for yourself in Brillat-Savarin, even if one be a grand duke and one takes the quail for a roasted anarchist!"

"I'll have to ask the prince about that," said Wilhelm huffily, helping himself to porridge. "He's nearly a grand duke himself and must know about such things better than any of us."

The prince appeared at that moment and stood looking through the glass door, as he said with indulgent pity:

"Fancy eating breakfast just as we are sailing by Fiumefreddo, Gurna, and Fondachello! A fleeting moment we may never hope to recapture...."

"Fancy sleeping on to eight o'clock on such a morning," retorted Diana, "and then to try and cloak the misdemeanour with an erudition acquired on the wing as it were—for I am sure you've only culled those names from a map as you were dressing!"

"Well, you can't deny that I've committed them to memory with commendable promptitude," said the prince, as he took his place on Diana's left, for, wishing to avoid formal etiquette of any kind, it had been agreed that all were to take their seats at table as chance would have it—an arrangement which invariably entailed a general post of table napkins as the prelude to every meal. "Fate, in the person of Giorgino, our worthy chef's assistant, who from a passionate desire to move in high social circles gets up when everyone else is asleep and lays the breakfast table, fate, I say, had decreed that the Russian should sit here. But I am not afraid to gainsay the dame by removing Sergievitch's napkin to a lower place at our board," and he suited the action to the word. "Good morning, Herr Wilhelm!"

Wilhelm, busy ladling in his porridge, was content to reply:

"Good morning! Do you happen ever to have killed a quail by biting off its head?"

The prince's eyebrows went up in perplexity at the question. Then, turning to Diana, he inquired:

"Has Herr Wilhelm had a bad dream?"

She shook her head, saying:

"Marsala, porridge, sea air, Jean Paul, and a good deal of Stromboli...."

"Too much Stromboli," interrupted Scherer as he came forward with the Russian. When the chorus of greetings had subsided, he continued: "Not only that, but too much mail as well. I was a fool to call for it in Messina yesterday, it's given me a headache going through the pile and has made me late for breakfast."

"Allow me," said Diana offering him the dish, and for a good while thereafter the five of them were busy with the details of breakfasting.

"Can I get no information for my department?" inquired Diana, at length.

"I suggest an editorial staff on the following lines," said the prince. "The aim of the Scherer expedition: to incite Lord Northcliffe to suicide. The means: publication of events just before their occurrence. Leader writer: the Captain. Trade: Herr Scherer. Commerce: Fräulein de Wassilko. Technical affairs: Herr Wilhelm. Advertisements: Herr Franklin. Art: Giorgino, who lays our dining table so well. Reminiscences of the twenty-first century: Dr. Sergievitch."

"And what about yourself, Prince?"

"I am, of course, the Constant Reader, who for years has sent in letters of protest, in English, in American, in Russian, in Italian, to say: 'I earnestly request you to give us a little less "Excelsior."'"

"Your arrangement won't do at all," interrupted Scherer, "for, since we shall have to depend on our advertisements for our financial security, we must have some one who can get up early!"

Whereupon they all began to comment on Franklin's unpunctuality as if they themselves had been up for hours. Diana recommended Wilhelm for the post, seeing that he had been the first of the men to put in an appearance, but, since Franklin himself entered at that moment, all were nonplussed for a reply.

"I'm awfully sorry," apologized Franklin, hastily slipping into the vacant place, "but I've had a most extraordinary dream!"

"With whom?" asked Wilhelm innocently.

"With a French colonial. He and I used constantly to be at loggerheads...."

Whereat they all laughed, and Diana said:

"The prince told us a similar story yesterday. It seems to me there is too much dreaming aboard the 'Excelsior.' You ought to run more races, or swing dumbbells or something. Have we any foils?"

"You need not have anxiety on my account," said Scherer, "for I never dream."

He spoke so simply that no one could doubt the truth of the statement. The prince's scepticism might have led him to demur had not Kyril, with his usual solemnity amid the flashes of wit and humour of his comrades, exclaimed:

"So there really are people in the world who never dream!"

"And who are, nevertheless, musical, you'd like to add. Eh?"

The prince had tossed the repartee to the Russian, hoping to bring a little levity into the solemn seriousness which the man's words had cast upon the company.

"No, what I had in mind was that there were actually persons who never dream and are yet competent to carry out business transactions."

Even the prince, paradoxical as were his outlooks as a rule, was taken aback. Who could have imagined such words in the mouth of a revolutionary? Everyone was now alert in the discussion, while Scherer endeavoured to exculpate himself by saying:

"And why not? So long as a man does not forget the dream of his own practical endeavour, what matters it if his nights are dreamless? Day cannot kill a dream which night has not created!"

"Wilhelm," cried Diana cheerfully, "confirmed dreamer that you are, there's hope for you yet! Even now you may become a man of action!" Her eyes met Franklin's as she spoke, and she realized that though he too was striving towards practical achievements, he had no wish to be exiled from the realm of dreams. She smiled at him across the table.

"You're laughing at me," protested Scherer.

"I am merely laughing at the principles of those who can tolerate fulfilment only when it is in harmony with their own peculiar nature."

The prince, silent himself, became aware that between Diana and the four other men, a series of epigrams was in course of construction. He seemed to perceive the thoughts like living sparks glowing in mid air, when the Russian intervened:

"Fulfilment? There's no such thing so far as rationalists are concerned, and as for us others it would only serve to hinder our activities. Unless one can die at the very moment of fulfilment, it were better never to have been born at all. He who, while dreaming, acts, is even more dangerous than he who could create in response to his dream. In this matter, likewise, I am all in favour of a partition of powers."

Franklin, hardly admitting even to himself how much he disliked the Russian, followed what Sergievitch said as in a dream, barely conscious of the meaning of the words. Before him he saw a man, handsome and young, with hair, complexion, and eyes so clear as to gainsay the sombre spirit which pervaded Kyril's whole inner being. Surely, thought Franklin, this man must be instinct with devotion, imagination, and at the same time so completely master of himself that he gives his fancy rein only to a circumscribed extent, never allowing it to get out of control. He sought to probe the young Russian's heart.

Precisely because he did not understand Kyril as well as Franklin did, Wilhelm liked the Russian. After a while he asked innocently:

"Do you mind telling me what partition of powers means?"

"Alternative spells of freedom and unfreedom," explained Scherer.

"Not bad, so long as you don't take the words in a political sense," commented Kyril. "All the same there's a certain danger...."

"Everything seems to harbour dangers for you this morning," said the prince politely. "And yet the sky is blue and cloudless, and there is no wind to ruffle the waters." He glanced over at Diana to see if she would not give the signal to rise. But she remained seated.

Scherer said softly: "Give me the man who, wide-awake, controls his deeds!"

"And I love the deed which is moulded on the anvil of a dream," put in Franklin.

All were silent for a time. Then Diana, turning to the prince, asked with a smile:

"What have you to say to this?"

"I? Oh, I am honestly fonder of the people themselves than of the people's leaders or of their works, though I would not renounce laurel or other crowns. But I know that such thoughts are quite out of date!"

He looked squarely at Diana as he finished, thus making it clear to her that he wished her to give the signal which should put an end to the meal. He wanted to withdraw, to be free, for he had revealed a tiny corner of his heart and felt profoundly moved at what he had done. In his embarrassment he turned away, and did not observe Kyril's blue eyes, more pure, more innocent than ever, fixed upon him appreciatively. The people! That word, falling from the lips of so paradoxical a creature as the prince, spoken so simply, nonplussed the revolutionary and yet gave him premonitions of a future understanding.

Diana, as she rose, avoided the eyes of both men, seeking Scherer's steady gaze. But instead, she encountered Wilhelm's boyish eyes, puzzled, perplexed, and she heard him mutter to himself:

"What on earth are they all talking about? I haven't understood a word!"

And he slipped through the glass door in her wake.

CHAPTER THREE

The sun hung midway between the zenith and the western horizon as the "Excelsior" drew near the harbour of Syracuse. As they approached, the travellers looked through the telescope at the reality about which they had been dreaming all along. But although the prince jested and Wilhelm gave rein to his fancy, the one dryly sceptical, the other naïve and ingenuous, although the whole company was eager and expectant at the proximity of this memorial of ancient Greece, yet their customary cheerfulness seemed a little damped this afternoon. Diana had passed the day in far-ranging talk with Wilhelm and Franklin; the others had been more silent than usual. It was obvious that the conversation was stimulated by Diana's presence, and though not actually antagonistic, nevertheless occasionally bordered on recrimination.

Scherer, as host and owner of the yacht, had become accustomed to the shade of arrogance with which the intellectuals of the party regarded him, the mere business man. He was tolerant and indulgent towards this unconscious assumption of superiority. But the way in which the Russian opposed Scherer's practical outlook on life with his own ideological conceptions, seemed to the financier on a different plane from the oppositions he encountered among his other guests. It made him pensive and a little uneasy on his own and on Sergievitch's account. For he felt that from the point of view of problems to be faced, he and the Russian had much in common, whereas, from the outlook of political principles, everything tended to keep them apart. He himself could never be more than a dabbler in socialism. He was instinctively aware that in the young foreigner's heart there was something else besides the anarchist autocrat. This premonition moved him profoundly, as when a man unintentionally touching a woman or seeing her in a new gown, is conscious of a sensual thrill at the contact or the sight, and suddenly realizes she is quitting the circle in which she has hitherto existed for him, and is escaping into the distance.

The party's spirits rose as the yacht put into the harbour. Scherer estimated the width of the entry which the Syracusans had once closed with chains and boats against the onslaughts of Nicias. There was talk of mines and submarines, and of how only the means had changed, not the theories. Once ashore, they found themselves accompanied by a growing crowd of self-constituted guides as they strolled about the streets of the ancient city. They chaffed one another about their recently acquired knowledge of the place—mostly crammed up for the occasion from guide books. The gloom which had clung to the company all day gradually dispelled, and even the two poets joined in the general hilarity. A little cluster of shrubs which formed a circle round the well in the ancient market-place attracted Wilhelm's attention.

"The first courier from Africa," said Scherer sententiously. "And to think that out of these amazingly bristly stalks the Egyptians of old made their amazingly bristly paper."

Wilhelm looked up, inquiringly, for he was puzzled.

"Scherer means papyrus," said Franklin softly. "You could write sonnets on the stuff."

Wilhelm passed his fingers over the stalks. Nowhere could he find a smooth surface.

"But how could one ever write on such a thing?" he asked suspiciously.

Scherer explained the process whereby the fibres were converted into paper, while the whole company lolled against the shaft of the well, and a dozen or more children and beggars took up their stand around the visitors. Wilhelm followed Scherer's little lecture with the keen curiosity of a boy.

"In a word," concluded the prince, who had recaptured his customary mood of raillery, "all the misfortunes which beset this world have their origin in this plant, which may be looked upon as the instrument whereby light has been brought out of the East!"

"It serves also to disseminate speeches from the throne, Your Highness," retorted Kyril provocatively.

"Sonnets, demonstrations, newspapers," said Scherer, still stroking the plant with his fingers, "the stuff's as dangerous as dynamite! Don't you think so too?"

Diana, to whom the question had been addressed in order to draw her out of her silence, answered laughingly:

"Does not one of you hear the voice of the well which is encircled by the plant? Arethusa herself, and at this very spot the hunted nymph must have been metamorphosed. The water in the well is salt to the tongue, so bitterly did the maiden weep. Diana was responsible for the metamorphosis..."

She muttered the last words to herself and gazed into the well's depths. There was a silence, while five men's eyes were fixed upon the young woman who stood leaning over the parapet, and who bore the name of a goddess.

The prince clicked his tongue. He hated to have to live through such moments of tension while in the company of others.

"Diana has in very truth metamorphosed all of us," he said at length. "How about following this gentleman who for the last ten minutes has been trying to entice us into his osteria?"

"Al teatro, Signori! Al teatro!" yelled a voice from the throng, while twenty hands pointed in the same direction, and twenty voices echoed the cry. It was agreed that they would go, and as they went towards the building the crowd pushed them and pulled them and gesticulated wildly. They passed over the bridge which separated Ortygia from the mainland, and soon came to the hill, Eduard leading the way amid a mob of citizens, and Kyril walking on the flank, not quite so hemmed in as the prince. Scherer, who was following with Franklin, noticed this and observed:

"How could a stranger decide which was the prince and which the man of the people?"

"But are they so different? Are they really so different?" asked Franklin. "Are they not, rather, brothers? Idealists both?"

"It often happens that those who belong to the same intellectual category possess the fewest points of resemblance."

"But would you suffer yourself to be kept apart from a person you liked simply because of differences in social status, position, rank, or what not?"

Scherer thought: "He'd love to write a sonnet on a papyrus after all!" A smile lighted up his face at the notion, and he said aloud: "Yes, such things can keep kindred spirits apart. Birth, above all, is a hindrance. The papyrus, born in Egypt, and transplanted to Syracuse, cannot be acclimatized in Stockholm. But what I mainly had in mind was the varying quantity of freedom these two men might enjoy and turn to advantage."

"Is the Russian then so fettered and unfree merely because the tsar has exiled him from the possible arena of his activity?"

"The Russian? I would rather say the prince; it is he who is shackled because his father is a reigning monarch! Can't you see the counterpart?"

Franklin was silent. His mind, ever ready to absorb as much of the world of reality as he could house in the realm of his fancy, was open to the influence of this man of the world. He was ever willing, despite his grey hairs, to acquire new knowledge, and, since the beginning of the cruise, he had kept aloof from Diana and Wilhelm whose playful ways put him out of humour.

These two young people brought up the rear. Wilhelm had held his peace for some time; then he said:

"Arethusa! I can fancy christening a serious little girl by such a name, a little maid one would sit upon one's knee. Arethusa..."

He weighed the name, dandling it, as if it were in actual fact a child one were playing with. Then he asked abruptly:

"Diana?"

"Yes, Wilhelm?"

"Are you really a nymph?"

"You are a fool," chanted Diana, running away from his side and rejoining the others.

It was not until they had entered the Greek theatre that they were able to shake off the crowd which had accompanied them. The custodian, a man as solemn as a Saracen and as beautiful as an Arab, uniting in his person the attributes of the two races out of which the Sicilians have sprung, was content to murmur a few names, and after a while he ceased talking altogether. The travellers sat motionless upon the topmost step, looking down on the great tiers which had been hewn out of the rock, and which still gave the impression of an amphitheatre. But an earthquake had destroyed the stage and other structures, thus freeing the view westward over the harbour, the town, and the sea.

The flight of steps was overgrown with moss and ivy, and the stone had been weathered by two thousand years of wind and brine. Laurels and cherry-laurels shaded the parapets and walls, while fresh green leaves were sprouting from the gnarled and twisted branches of ancient fig trees. Gloomy olive groves were burnished by the evening sun, and, clinging to the broken pillars of what had been the stage, the wistaria drooped under the weight of its heavy clusters of purple blossoms. The eye travelled over the silhouettes of towers and gables in the town, to the sea, circumscribed by jagged cliffs and mountains capped with a bank of cloud. The foreground of this picture was inexpressibly sweet, wellnigh idyllic, with its scents and delicate melancholy; but the distant view verged on the tragical and forced the onlooker to recall how in far-off days the great choruses of the poets had filled the air and delighted the ears of the thousands who occupied the serried rows of the amphitheatre.

Each member of the little company from the yacht had sat down where chance had offered a convenient resting place. No one spoke. All were busied with their private meditations. Franklin, carried away by the mighty rhythm of the view, peopled the scene with figures from his own dramas. Kyril, nearby, envisaged vast assemblies of workers, gathered together in this spot before they marched upon the town, not to be hewn mercilessly down a second time as they had been at the Winter Palace! Scherer, who had happened to take a lower step for his resting place, thought how splendid a thing it would be to have such an open-air theatre up north, where, of a Sunday, popular plays on the large scale might be played; later on one might perform Schiller; and then, in the end, have a try at producing Goethe's Iphigenia. But not the dramas of classical antiquity, they might not be understood. Wilhelm was congratulating himself that he had not brought his lute. "I could not have refrained from playing it, and that might not have suited the others' moods. I wonder if we are going back to the yacht for dinner? Those wisteria clusters look like grapes. It must be exquisite here in autumn..."

Eduard and Diana were sitting higher than the rest, but they were separated by the whole width of the round tower. The prince looked at her and thought: "Are we foredoomed to be separated? Still, we are sitting on the same step!"

Diana leaned her arm on a broken shaft, her head was bent back, her legs were crossed, and her eyes were fixed upon the sea as it struggled with the forces of light and shade. She had completely forgotten the friends around her.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Here's a revised sketch of the thing. Kraus has just sent it. You'll be able to judge from a glance at it whether you are mistaken or not."

Scherer, who was pacing the deck with Diana, stopped in his walk to extract a sheet of paper from a yellow folder. The wind caught the sheet and wrestled for its possession, but Scherer took refuge behind a screen where Diana rejoined him. Each held a corner of the refractory paper in order the better to study it.

"The red lines indicate the numbers of the first-rate hotels throughout Germany, don't they?"

"Yes. And the blue the bigger clubs. They are used as yet only by the editorial staffs of newspapers, by ministers and stockbrokers, whose numbers are reckoned up in the yellow column. But the figures are grossly exaggerated. The small figures at the foot of the page indicate that the cost of the news service should be reduced by from ten to twenty per cent, if we are to get a decent dividend out of the concern."

He pocketed the document once more, and the two resumed their morning walk, still discussing business affairs as was their habit at this hour of the morning.

"That's all right, I quite understand. Wouldn't it be better to increase the rate of subscription than to lower the cost of production?"

"There's your English training peeping out," laughed Scherer. "A club or hotel in Germany would far rather pay twelve hundred marks for a glass-doored cupboard wherein it could store all the news of the world to be gaped at by every passer-by; they would sooner expend thousands in subscriptions to periodicals which they could file in ancient presses as if they were some rare plants, than subscribe liberally to such a news service as I propose, which is a much less tangible asset."

"I've never heard any one rail against newspapers as you do," retorted Diana merrily. "There's nothing in the world you have your knife into so much!"

Scherer, who in this matter had very definite principles to guide him, answered half ironically:

"The newspaper is a thing that needs to be conquered."

"Thus spake Zarathustra," came a voice from the recesses of a deck chair. The two paused for a moment by the owner of the voice, who was engaged in a conversation with Kyril. Diana was used now to the prince's badinage, and she surmised that his sudden intrusion into an alien tête-à-tête must mean that he had come to a knotty point in his discussion with the Russian. She was, therefore, somewhat surprised when Kyril himself gave sanction to the prince's interpolation by saying:

"But not until the kings have spoken, Herr Scherer!"

"Oh, they never read the papers," answered Scherer good-humouredly, "and yet they are the very people who need them most!"

He turned on his heel to resume his walk, and as Diana prepared to follow, a gust of wind took her skirt and lifted it high. As she turned on herself to bring it to reason, Scherer noticed that the two young men, who had obviously been having an argument over contentious points, with equal seriousness were now regarding Diana's legs.

"They look as if they were faced with a very intricate problem," said Diana as she rejoined the financier.

Scherer, amused by the ambiguity of the words, which he knew to be spoken in perfect innocence, answered nothing. She was puzzled by his silence and his obvious amusement.

"You are smiling," she said. "Have I ... have you...?"

"No, no! Nothing," protested Scherer kindly, and he was delighted to see a blush mounting to her cheeks. "Their talk may have come to a dead point just as we came up."

Diana, patting her blouse and skirt with a very feminine gesture in case there should still be a certain disorder in her appearance, racked her brains to discover what he was hiding from her.

"Well now," said Scherer coming back to the point in a businesslike manner, "a news service for Germans must be run cheaply or not at all. Otherwise our worthy compatriots will reproach us, saying: the Wolff Information Bureau gave us just as good service for a quarter the price."

"Wolff's!" cried Diana, disdainfully.

"A poor, miserable tapeworm," rejoined Scherer zealously, "never stopping once it is set going, and provides the reader with the pleasure of seeing world history printed before his very eyes. A fantastical freak of a thing!"

Diana listened to his tirade with amusement. These rare moments of enthusiasm in a man who habitually assumed an attitude of reserve, were congenial to her. It pleased her to see his ripe experience irradiated with youthful ardour.

"I surrender," she said merrily, bringing her hand to the salute, and speaking with the smartness of a young midshipman on duty. "As soon as we are back in Berlin, I'll get to work on our budget and see whether I can't make a reduction in its figures of at least ten per cent a year."

"Ten to twenty."

"That means fifteen."

"Which is not quite the same thing, you know!"

They discussed the issue thus raised, and while they did so the figures they mentioned were wafted over to Franklin as he stood gazing seaward from the bows. Wilhelm was lounging in a deck chair by his side, blinking his eyes in the sunlight, wrapped in reverie. Diana, as she and Scherer turned, caught him saying:

"You are deceiving me. There aren't any dolphins in reality. This is the tenth day of our cruise and I haven't seen a sign of one yet!"

"They're always discussing percentage," muttered Franklin, who had not heard what Wilhelm was saying. He was invariably more of the poet and less of the diplomat when he had to do with men of the world. "It's amazing the way he parcels out the wealth of Mother Earth!"

Franklin seemed to have forgotten Wilhelm's presence, to have forgotten the ship, and above all to have forgotten his own position in the world, as he continued to utter his thoughts aloud oblivious of whether he was overheard or not.

"A woman of genius, daring to the verge of indiscretion.... A man, emerging from the mist, revealing himself for one minute of time, and realizing that he stands on the edge of an abyss..." He turned abruptly towards Wilhelm, leaning over him, his hands working as if he were moulding clay: "Can't you understand? The man of the world's clarity of vision dimmed by sensual charms which he, and he alone, must never, never allow himself to enjoy unless he breaks the laws of his own being."

He pulled himself together, turned away, and once more contemplated the expanse of waters.

Wilhelm had followed his discourse with composure. He did not budge from his chair, but continued to lie back among the comfortable cushions as he said:

"You've fallen into one of your mad moods again, I see. Hardly twenty minutes have passed by since you were informing me that there was nothing in the whole world to equal movement, motion. You even raised your voice to exclaim: 'Swimming, Wilhelm, swimming!' And the sailor over there, whose name is likewise Wilhelm, was preparing to come to our assistance with a life-belt. 'To swim with a comrade, breasting the current together, and to reach the goal before him. That's better by far than to sit shivering on the bank and make sketches of the swimmers.'"

"What the devil are you talking about?" interrupted Franklin crossly.

"I assure you," continued Wilhelm quietly, "that's exactly what you said. It was eleven o'clock precisely when you made your proclamation—I'd just looked at my watch—and it is not quite half-past now."

"There'll be no such embassies in the future," Kyril was saying at the other end of the vessel, just as Diana and Scherer turned in their walk. "Red plush. Gobelin tapestry, birthday celebrations, tea-parties as background to decisions concerning foreign policy, all will come to an end; and we'll have business conducted in offices, soberly decorated, with grey walls and carpets and easy chairs such as we affect in clubs and smoking rooms..."

"Are you so profoundly convinced of the ethical value of leather?" asked the prince mockingly. But Kyril continued unheeding:

"No conversation shall take place save in the presence of a dictaphone, set up somewhere conspicuous so that everyone can see it, a dictaphone which will reproduce the talk within the walls of parliament. Everything must be clear, unambiguous, sober. Business, not diplomacy!"

"Shall we be allowed to smoke cigarettes?"

"Each member of the community will eat and smoke according to individual preference. But the State will no longer foot the bill for what its representative sets before the representative of another State and his wife in order that through the exploitation of the indigestion of the former or the taste for good wines of the latter, he may elicit from his guests certain useful information."

"Rather a dreary world, Doctor. Doesn't it seem to you that such representation abroad is very similar to the interior functioning of a certain police-ridden State which is far from being to your taste?"

Kyril stood motionless, pipe in hand.

"The common things of everyday life will be irradiated with the Idea," he said at length.

"The Idea? Ah, yes, of course! But what about the persons who carry out the Idea?"

"They will devote themselves whole-heartedly to the carrying out of the Idea."

"And they'll all be in complete sympathy with it, eh? As a matter of principle, there will be no such thing as hatred in your community, I suppose? Les passions seront tout à fait nivelées?"

"Les passions," echoed Kyril gloomily, a savage tone coming into his voice, and Eduard, who had quite casually lapsed into the foreign idiom, was surprised at having inveigled the young man into speaking French, and equally surprised at the excellent way the words were pronounced. He also noticed that the thick, blond brows were drawn together, the eyes, which had been shining and happy, were clouded, and the whole man, hitherto so motionless, leaning against the rail, was stirring, was pulling himself away from the support, and was slowly turning round to contemplate upon the sea the yacht's wake.

Eduard noted all these things, and held his peace. It is always so, he mused. Whenever such ideologues leave the party rut, they invariably lapse into being dragons from a primitive age. Just as he begins to be interesting, he ceases to talk—much as I do myself!

That evening the prince stood with Diana, on the bridge. A fresh breeze had been blowing all day from the east, and the yacht was under sail. Now the air was very still and very warm. They were rounding Cape Matapan, and knew that they were in for a spell of balmy weather. Diana had thrown a white cape over her evening gown, and was wearing it toga fashion, like an Italian officer. She stood bare-headed just in front of Eduard, who was likewise wrapped in a cloak, and towering head and shoulders above her. From a distance, they might have been taken for one person, standing alone.

The night sky, clear as crystal, brilliant as it can only be in the south, was studded with stars. Diana did not speak. She looked this way and that, bending over the rail, gazing upward at the constellations which, as she picked them out, she named quietly, for her own gratification. Eduard pressed close against the rail so as not to hinder her in her movements, for, though she herself had invited him to come with her, she seemed to have forgotten his presence, and to be averse to being reminded that he was at her side. He was, therefore, taken unawares when she cried:

"There it is!"

"What?"

"The Scales. Don't you see? Over there!"

"Where?"

"There, just in line with the helmsman's cap is Lyra, and two spans away the four bright stars—over there! Do you see them now?"

He leaned forward to follow her indications, and as he did so, she placed her left hand on his shoulder. Eduard saw nothing, but he kept very still. He wanted to prolong this moment, to eke it out to the utmost. He wondered if he had better say that he saw the constellation, but that might put an end to her present position. Perhaps he had better ask her once more to point it out; but that might cause her to make some other movement. At last he felt that he dared not allow any more time to elapse before speaking, so he forced himself to say:

"Four stars, of course, yes, that's the Scales."

His tone affected Diana disagreeably; she made for the ladder, and climbed down before he had collected his wits sufficiently to give her a helping hand. But she knew the prince too well now to feel piqued; and he, though annoyed with himself, was determined not to spoil their stroll together. They walked forward in silence, and after a while he said:

"Is that your constellation?"

"A balance! Could one have a better guiding star?" She paused in her walk and leaned against the rail.

Again the prince was silent. She had opened her cloak in order to throw the end over her shoulder again for it had become dislodged, and as she did so the fragrance of her body and her gown was wafted to him on the night air, confusing his thoughts once more. Could this woman, speaking so calmly under the stars, be the one whose slim, boylike legs a wanton wind had displayed this same morning, whose sun-tanned neck had spoken to him of youth and vigour as the company had sat over dinner, and whose bronzed figure he had seen for one second of time when she had posed as the goddess of the chase?

Determined to come back to the present, he said:

"Someone was talking to me only this morning about balance in the government of a State, as if we need no longer reckon with the human, emotional factor. At last I asked him: 'And what about the passions?'

"La passione," Diana softly murmured, turning round to peer into the sea.

Eduard was taken aback by her choice of such romantic words in so romantic a tongue; he was no less struck by the similarity between Kyril's reaction and Diana's to his shaft. He was annoyed at finding any similarity between two such alien natures, and said with some asperity:

"Si, signorina! Or is the constellation to become obscured as soon as we are driven to do something ill-balanced?"

She looked over her shoulder, and asked coldly:

"Are you afraid of ill-balanced things?"

He did not yield ground under her gaze, and retorted:

"You yourself chose the Scales as your guiding star, not I!"

"My life," she continued in a gentler voice, "has been one long stare at that constellation—and yet, judging by the course my life has hitherto taken, one would think that Mars had been my guiding star."

She raised her head as she spoke, and looked up as if seeking the planet she had just named. He gazed at her in speechless devotion, and when she, calmed by her own words, rested her arms once more on the rail and cast her eyes upon the water, he said tranquilly:

"And yet your life seems to me, as I contemplate it from afar, to have been constructive rather than destructive."

She was wholly reconciled by his words, and said softly:

"Mars lives within me, Prince, as he lives within us all."

Eduard watched her as, her arms wrapped in her cloak, she leaned over the yacht's side. A tiny hem of her silk dress gleamed beneath the lower edge of her cloak. He took in every detail, as he mused: "In an hour's time she will be alone, looking into the small, triangular glass I caught a glimpse of as I passed by her open door yesterday..." At length he said, almost in a whisper:

"Mars and the Scales. Maybe they are both alternatively the guiding stars of wanderers?"

Diana raised her eyes to his, as she said:

"And yet one of them guides the steadfast, while the other illumines the path of the warrior. Surely of all the company aboard the 'Excelsior,' you are the one who should choose the Scales for your emblem."

He felt that he had been dissected, that the words were hemming him in, and was about to answer somewhat warmly, when the sound of a lute broke upon the stillness of the night. Diana's harshness evaporated as the strains were carried towards her, and she said, smiling happily:

"Listen! Wilhelm is going to sing," and she began to hum the song.

With the sprightliness of a girl of seventeen, and as unwittingly as a princess, she slipped her hand through Eduard's arm, and rejoined the circle of her friends.

CHAPTER FIVE

A solitary gull followed the yacht. How had it got separated from its fellows? Had its flight been hindered by some accident? From what far-off island had it come, towards what shore was it now winging its way? It hovered above the masthead. Minutes went by. Then suddenly it swooped, making straight for the sea. Was it pouncing upon its prey?

"A lonesome creature," mused Diana, who had spent the whole afternoon on deck, reclining in a chair, alone, motionless, brooding. "Freedom! There is more freedom around that bird than there is around the leopard in the African desert or the sable in the northern wilds. There are sportsmen it is true—but sportsmen can do no more than kill. They do not trap, and if they do, it is only to capture the young and immature or those which have allowed themselves to be hoaxed. Has a human being ever ventured to arrogate to himself so great an abundance of freedom as does this wild bird, winging its way through those vast solitudes? And I, shall I not be punished because of my bold determination to be free?

"Homeless as that bird, and to remain so, always... She flies through the infinite shining heavens, between sky and sea, and screams her joy towards the setting stars. Or has she a nest on a ledge of cliff in one of the islands, with chicks agog for her return? ... Home. Whenever we sail away from port, these five men, my companions, cannot tear their eyes away from the land, they gaze yearningly back at it as if they were leaving a mother behind, or some work they had created and loved. If I had ever known a mother, I might have been the creator of a work.... But it may be that, being a reincarnation of herself, I have never thought it worth while to seek her.... Perhaps my standard of perfection is too high for me ever to try to attain it.... And these men here, they are always building, they are hampered by innumerable veils, shackled by the multiplicity of the trivial happenings on dry land. Not one of them is self-sufficient enough to love the solitude of the sea.... Is pride taking its revenge on you, Diana? ... I am alone...."

She closed her eyes to the long shafts of sunlight coming from a rift in the cloud-bank that lay over the western horizon. Her other senses were rendered more acute by the exclusion of the sense of sight, and the hum of the yacht's engines smote upon her ears. Her own pulse seemed to accommodate its rhythm to that of the engines; she became aware of the smell of brine and paint, of damp linen and lacquer, of scrubbing soap and train oil; and now came salt and spindrift from the waves, she tasted the bitterness on her lips, it clung to her cheeks, and the crystals dried upon her hair. For a while she lay, absorbing these delights of seafaring life through her ears and nose and tongue and skin and hair. With her eyes still closed, she drank in the elements around her, as she had occasionally drunk in her loves, and had she found herself in a man's arms on opening her eyes she would have felt no surprise whatever.

"The waters are dancing to the northward," mused Diana; "blue and gold eddies dimple and smile round a thousand bays because the wind is blowing softly from the south and ruffles the sea. Yet all the while, deep down under the surface, the great currents flow on, cold or hot, violet or green, obeying the uncoded laws of their existence, remote from the winds whose influence they never feel, and whose..."

Suddenly Diana's attention was attracted by a strange apparition just in front of the ship's nose, a dark wave as it were of black satin, thrusting up through the pellucid water: a dolphin! She sat upright, straining eagerly forward, gripping the arms of her chair, her feet planted firmly before her, her eyes, so recently closed or veiled in dreams, alight with curiosity, lending intensity to her whole attitude.

"How happy they are, rolling and somersaulting more full of joy than the dumb fishes. When we were in Ischia, Rafaello told me they responded to whistling, that they draw near, attracted by the sound, and then compete with each other in leaping and racing."

She sprang from her chair and, leaning over the rail, started to whistle, shrilly and loud, like a calling bird of prey. More and ever more shining black bodies rose to the surface, disappeared, popped up again, looking as if their backs were curving knives. On they went, playing in front of the yacht as she cut her way through the waters.

"Whistle and I'll come to ye," said Eduard coming up softly behind her. Diana barely gave him a nod, so delighted was she in watching the antics of the dolphins. She called out laughingly:

"Wilhelm ought to be here! He'd see Aries riding on their backs!"

"The modern Orpheus is having his tea, and my unmusical lips offer their services as substitute," whereupon he, too, started to whistle.

"On my father's table there was a—— Oh look! There's another—and another." She stretched her arms out over the rail jubilantly.

"What was on your father's table?"

"A tiny figure of Aphrodite, and there was a dolphin at her feet."

She spoke loudly in her excitement. Then, suddenly modifying her voice, she added quietly:

"And when one day I asked him the reason he said: 'Well you know, Diana,' and he had a wonderful way of giving full value to the vowels in my name, 'they both emerged from the sea.' That's all he said—and now, there they are!"

"Both?"

"All of them," avoiding the net of questions he was trying to entangle her in.

The wind now took control of the evening, its deep organ tones filling the air, scattering in one gust the play of light and shade, the fishes, and the thoughts of Diana and her friend. The sun, as it sank behind a menacing bank of clouds, sent its rays up into the zenith in a final effort to assert its power, and thereby converted the sky into one huge opal in a twilight of milky blue.

"We are already sinking into a dead world, while up there all is bright serenity," said Diana softly, her mood in tune with the hour.

Again the sun's disk broke through a rift in the clouds.

"When a king lies dying, the meanest of his subjects can gaze into his eyes," murmured Eduard misanthropically, turning away from the west as if he wished to avoid witnessing the end.

"But this king rises again and again," said Diana.

Giorgino came along to haul down the flag. It still fluttered in the breeze as it ran down the yard, but on touching the deck it suddenly lay flat and motionless. Eduard lifted his cap abruptly, his face darkening.

"So you still pay homage to a linen rag?" a voice broke in on the silence, and Kyril stepped out of the cabin where he had been passing the afternoon over his books.

Eduard was the only passenger aboard who held to this ceremony. But he felt a certain embarrassment in its performance and usually took care to be alone. Now he stood there, not knowing what to do, completely nonplussed, for he dared not raise his voice in derision, and equally dared not, in view of the freedom he encouraged among his companions, enter a protest. Diana guessed his dilemma, and came to his aid, saying earnestly:

"The prince is saluting a thing in the death-throes."

Eduard's heart went out to her. The moment after she had spoken the words, he would have liked to fall at her feet in gratitude. Of course he did no such thing, but firmly stood his ground, and only a slight twitching at the corner of his mouth betrayed how deeply the Russian's words had piqued him. Kyril was not slow to perceive the effect his remark had had. He pulled himself together and said ambiguously, taking his pipe from between his lips and bringing his hand to the salute:

"Yes, Your Highness, a thing in the death-throes."

Eduard turned towards the speaker, likewise saluted, and said laconically:

"Nothing to worry about, Doctor Sergievitch. Black and white are the colours of Prussia. Red is for the Internationale. Maybe I was paying reverence to all three."

CHAPTER SIX

The "Excelsior," the graceful vessel that had been steaming on her way, a long streamer of smoke flying backward from the funnel like the scarf of a woman hastening to the tryst, had suffered a change in the course of the night, and was now a sailing ship under full canvas before a fresh north-westerly wind. When the company came on deck, everyone was surprised and delighted at the transformation. Six pairs of eyes were cast up towards the bellying sails. Questions rained upon the crew, who were hard put to it to find satisfactory answers; and if any of the passengers were in a mood to air their knowledge of such matters, they very soon proved themselves ignoramuses who had merely gleaned a little untrustworthy information from books. Scherer, who had made himself so expert in the running of his own machines, and turbines, and lighting, and what not in his industrial undertakings, that he could make a repair when needed with his own hands, felt completely at fault where a sailing yacht was concerned. He got the captain to take him round, to show him this and explain him that, and his scientifically trained mind very quickly grasped the most intricate details of stress and strain, of cordage and canvas and yard.

At the outset, Franklin had accompanied the two on their round, listening to the captain's lesson in sailcraft. But soon he ceased to hear and became absorbed in contemplative reverie, as was his wont when his fellow mortals were experiencing some new sensation. He loved to watch their reactions to hitherto unknown phenomena. So now, he soon saw nothing else but the voyager and the ship-owner into whom Scherer for the nonce was metamorphosed; he envisaged the two personalities as separate entities; the former gesticulating to make himself the better understood, the latter, hands thrust deep into his pockets, putting his mind in motion to grasp the unknown terminology and to memorize it methodically.

Eduard, meanwhile, found himself near the ratlines with Wilhelm at his side. A young fellow was aloft trying to catch a rope that had worked loose and was dangling and swinging in the breeze. But neither from above nor from below could the sailor reach the refractory piece of cordage.

"Try from above," yelled the mate from the deck, "from above."

But the youngster tried in vain.

"Is that Giorgino?" asked the prince.

"How can I tell what the young idiot's name is? I'd like to know where the devil the captain could have found such a booby. He's hard put to it to wash the dishes properly, and now he's suddenly expected to do the work of a sailor!"

The prince, tickled at this summary of the lad's career, laughed, and called up to him:

"Tira quell' altera corda!"

Thereupon Giorgino started pulling on a cord as if in response to the order. But his action proved hopelessly wrong, and the sail was put out of gear. The mate swore and raged. Wilhelm roared with laughter, while the mate glared at him ferociously. Then the young poet, having divested himself of his jacket, began to climb the ratlines. Eduard pulled him back, for he knew that only those with a very steady head could venture up into those swaying, airy altitudes.

Kyril meanwhile had joined the group. He quietly laid aside his coat and, without awaiting the mate's orders, called his instructions up to the boy. He spoke in Italian and Giorgino promptly responded by clambering down to one of the yards while the Russian mounted to replace him. Kyril's longer arm was able to reach the offending bit of rope. He drew it in and attached it where it belonged, adjusted the flapping sail so that soon it was again catching the wind, and then descended from his perch.

The mate had done nothing to hinder him in his operations, for he realized that he had to do with a man who knew what was amiss. He growled his satisfaction, hustled the youngster out of his path, and, before Kyril had stepped down on to the deck, said to the two others:

"Not so bad, not so bad! The young man must have had some seafaring experience!"

Diana, who had just come up, overheard his words and looked inquiringly at the prince and then at the mate. But since neither seemed inclined to enlighten her, Wilhelm constituted himself her informant and pointed slyly up into the rigging. Someone was coming towards her from aloft. It could not be a member of the crew because the clothing was not that of a sailor. But she soon recognized the figure as that of her Russian fellow traveller. She followed the movement of his feet as they sought the rungs of the swaying ladder, was tempted to help him by calling: "to right," or "to left." Then she realized that she was looking at a man accustomed to climbing in the rigging. In silence, the little group followed Kyril's descent.

One final spring brought the Russian on to the deck again. Unabashed, he put order into his clothing, smoothed his trousers, tucked his shirt in, adjusted his belt. Diana watched him, herself unobserved. Not one of his movements escaped her. She had seldom been given an opportunity of observing a man, unaware of feminine scrutiny, attending to his physical comfort. Suddenly the vision of other manly forms she had known rose before her eyes. She saw them on horseback, or swimming, or rowing, or doing gymnastics, as she had seen them in the flesh at music halls or while engaged in sport. Simultaneously the slender body of the major she had once known, passed by; then that of a Pole as shapely as a young god of classical antiquity, to whom she had given her love solely in order to feast her eyes upon his physical beauty. And when the young Russian, pushing the sail aside, suddenly became aware of her observation and raised his cap from his ruffled hair, she said judiciously to herself:

"A very good figure indeed!"

The prince, who had also come forward, said:

"Dr. Sergievitch has it in mind to charter a vessel on his own account."

And Wilhelm, full of awed surprise, added:

"Oh, but surely you could be a captain on your own account, couldn't you?"

"Awfully sorry to be so untidy," apologized Kyril running his fingers through his rumpled hair and putting on his coat which Wilhelm respectfully held out for him. "I did not know that you... Besides, I'm all out of practice."

"How long ago?" asked Diana.

"Eighteen months."

"Regatta?"

"No, escaping."

Kyril answered these questions with a kind of ardent coldness, the tone he invariably assumed when he was asked for what he considered useless information. Eduard felt somewhat abashed, and looked to Diana to help him out of his perplexity. She did not respond at all to his appeal; indeed, it pleased her completely to ignore his presence. The one word "escaping" had gripped her, had touched a chord of sympathy in her heart. And while Wilhelm continued to stare open-mouthed at the amazing stranger, Diana rapidly ran through her mind the possible course of Kyril's life history, about which none of those aboard knew anything other than that Sergievitch had been exiled to Siberia.

"Ah? Then you escaped via Vladivostok?"

"On an American sailing vessel."

"Passport under a false name?"

"Of course. No money."

"Many weeks?"

"A good many."

"As foremast hand? My word!"

Wilhelm's astonishment waxed with every answer. Eduard had ears for Diana's questions alone, his attention was riveted on the manner of her asking. The economy of words between the two, the precision of question and answer, was demonstration enough that the man and the woman had been through experiences of a kindred nature. He was reminded of the curt manner of speech among apaches, artists, craftsmen; and suddenly it was borne in upon him that these two alien beings were intimately bound together by the ties of an adventurous life.

The breakfast gong broke up the group, Kyril walking away with Diana, and Wilhelm with Eduard bringing up the rear.

"Do you think he ever feels giddy?" asked Wilhelm in an awed voice.

"He climbs with great assurance," said Eduard vaguely, not wishing to have his thoughts disturbed.

Prince Eduard, as far as he was able, spent the rest of the day alone. He was trying in vain to recapture the strange and rare simplicity of that morning dialogue; and every time he caught sight of Kyril or of Diana, they seemed to be getting farther and farther away from the spheres he knew.

The Russian, too, was in no mood for any company but his own. He stood in the stern, gazing at the ship's wake, as if he saw therein a symbol of a world that was being left behind. He had been silently and yet mistrustfully drawing nearer to Diana, and now of a sudden a bridge had been thrown from either shore across the abyss which separated them. For just as Eduard's elegance and conversational powers were for ever rubbing him up the wrong way, so this woman's every gesture, so captivating in Eduard's eyes, was repellent and strange to him.

Diana spent the whole morning with Scherer; and the rest of the day, till sunset, she passed by herself. Now she lay in her deck chair, an unread book on her lap, dreaming, forgetful of the flight of time. Kyril found her thus alone, and made up his mind to have a talk with her, a thing he had hitherto been careful to avoid.

"What are you reading?" he asked without preface, for he was genuinely curious to know.

She roused herself at the sound of his rich baritone voice, looked up, and saw him leaning against the rail in the same blue suit he had been wearing in the morning.

"I'm not reading at all," she answered, closing the volume. "It's a collection of Swinburne's poems, poems of the sea among others. But today the sea is not as Swinburne saw it, so I have not been reading them."

"Does Herr Scherer like such things, too?"

She smiled.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because you work with him, help him in his journalistic work. What do you do it for, Fräulein de Wassilko?"

To Diana it was as if a sluice-gate had been opened in her heart, and the waters were rushing down into a huge basin, flooding over, and filling a second. Her name falling naked and cold from these Russian lips, here, in the midst of a southern sea, was a summons to her, warning her to steel herself, to buckle on her armour for the encounter. She sat up very straight as she answered:

"Because I have to earn my living, Dr. Sergievitch."

"For the sake of money?"

"Is that anything to be ashamed of?"

"A poor sort of aim in life!"

"But suppose it is only a means?"

"Then I should ask you to what end."

Diana became more reserved, and, used to make what capital she could out of those who questioned her by countering their questions with questions of her own, she inquired:

"Are means and end one and the same thing to you?"

His mouth twitched. He raised his voice, saying almost angrily:

"Always."

Then in a quieter tone he added:

"I serve an idea, and live by the party which serves the same idea."

She was taken aback by the precision and clarity of his words. Still, not wishing him to think she agreed with what he said, she asked:

"Has it always been so?"

"This ten years past."

"No other thought but the revolution?"

"And its consequences. Revolution is no more than a means."

She gazed up at him in silence. "Yes," she thought, "he has fine features still. Soon fanaticism will set its mark upon his face." Her fingers closed on her book and it made her feel that it at least portrayed a better world. She rose to her feet as she said softly:

"May you live to see your hopes fulfilled!"

"That's of no consequence," he cried, stepping up nearer to her. "Maybe it is only our children's children who are destined to see that future day."

The slightly ambiguous tone in which he had, all unawares, pronounced the word "our," offended Diana anew. She stepped back a pace and said:

"At any rate you want someone of your own blood to see that day."

Her eyes challenged his, and suddenly he saw nothing but the woman in her, standing as he had seen her once before, on the night she had posed as Atalanta. Thoughts chased one another through his brain as he asked:

"Why don't you, too, serve an idea?"

"You mean your own ideas, I suppose?"

"There does not appear to be any sense in your present activities. You don't seem to me to wish either to seduce or to shine or to climb or to bear children as other beautiful women do."

He spoke so coldly that any suggestion of flattery was excluded from his words. Her answer was as cool and collected:

"And do you recognize no other aims in life?"

He was silent, and she turned away, leaning over the rail and gazing down at the sea, now glowing in the evening splendour. "And he sees nothing of all this," thought Diana, "or, if he does, he despises it."

She straightened, and walked away towards her cabin; as she went, the sound of flapping sail and swaying ropes smote on her ears. Looking up into the ordered wilderness of shroud and canvas and masts she asked irrelevantly:

"Was it a fishing boat in which you escaped?"

"An old tub of a thing."

"Carrying a lot of canvas?"

"Aye."

"Bad crossing?"

"March."

"And before that—how did you get through Siberia?"

"Reindeer sledge."

"Is it true that they can go twenty-four hours in the traces without feeding?"

"Twenty hours, and sometimes even more. At every halt they snuggle down close to one another and lick snow. On arrival at a settlement, a native will lead them to a place where Iceland moss grows. Then they'll dig themselves in and eat their fill."

They had reached the companion ladder as he spoke. He was about to say something more, when a tall figure emerged from below and started to climb the steps. It was the prince, who had already changed for the evening.

"They look like two conspirators," he thought as he looked up and saw the pair silhouetted against the sky.

"He looks like a prince," thought Kyril, a feeling of hostility leaping up within him as Eduard's white shirtfront gleamed from the darkness below.

"Hello! Dressed already?" cried Diana as if suddenly aroused from sleep.

"On board H.M.S. 'Excelsior,' supper is served at seven—no frills."

"And we were in Siberia," laughed Diana, disappearing into her cabin.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Expectant, filled with that insatiable hunger which persons travelling by sea attribute to the tonic action of the salt-laden air, Scherer, Eduard, and Franklin were standing at the dining-room door, discussing the weather while awaiting the arrival of the rest of the company. Meals were served punctually aboard the "Excelsior," and Diana, as the only lady present, was especially careful as a rule to avoid being late. Eduard, who alone knew why she was not ready, held his tongue, so as not to have to tell the others that he had discovered her at so late an hour still in conversation with the Russian. It was difficult to decide what motive was uppermost in the prince's thoughts as he made up his mind to keep silence in the matter. He may have merely wished to avoid the risk of making a mountain out of a molehill by suggesting there was anything as yet between Kyril and Diana. Such vague surmises were apt, within the narrow confines of a ship at sea, to assume undue proportions. Or could it be that he, a prince, was suddenly aware that the revolutionist might be a rival for the lady's favour?

The conversation had petered out, and Franklin, going over to consult the chronometer, saw that it was already twenty minutes past the hour. Scherer pulled his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, slowly wound it up, and replaced it without looking to see what time it was. Eduard, observing the movements of the other two, shook his shirt cuff free of his left wrist and looked down at the dial. At that moment, Wilhelm, who had been standing a little apart and contemplating the sea from the ship's side, suddenly broke in upon the silence.

"It's all illuminated! The foam is all alight!"

The other three rejoined him, to watch the phosphorescent light on the water. Each wave as it rose towards the vessel seemed to be lit from beneath.

"Murmuring pearls," whispered Franklin.

"How wonderfully phosphorescent these tiny creatures are, to be sure," said Scherer, thoroughly interested.

"Like the Bundesrat during the speech from the throne," came from the prince.

Wilhelm who had hitherto been absorbed in his contemplation, now looked up, and asked:

"Oh, do they wear such shining robes on State occasions?"

"Dresses of State," answered the prince, and his tone implied a strange mixture of respect and mockery. "Furbelows from Haroun-al-Rashid's epoch, as our Russian comrade would say."

"It reminds me of Phœnician glass," said Diana, who had, unnoticed, joined the group. Everyone turned as she spoke, and, since there seemed to her an element of reproof in her friends' aspect, she added: "Perhaps you'll be sending me back to my cabin in disgrace, for I see it has gone the half hour and I have no excuse ready."

"I'm awfully sorry to be so late," said Kyril, dashing up from below. But his excuses sounded dull and inadequate after Diana's dainty little thrust.

Franklin thought: "A bassoon after the flute! How lovely her voice is."

"You've mentioned those glasses before," said Scherer as he made way to allow Diana to pass. "Did you not tell me your father had unearthed them somewhere?"

"Yes, and they lighted up the whole of my childhood with their opalescent spots, covered, as it were, by a film of lava."

By the time she had finished speaking, she had reached her end of the table, and, making a half turn, she stood poised for a moment with her bare arms slightly raised.

"She is certainly very beautiful," thought the Russian. "But she only cares for admiration and adventure; not an idea in her head. She's a lost soul."

"I'd always have her dress stunningly in the evening," said Scherer to himself. "And in the daytime she should be dressed as a girl."

"What an intricate gown," said Eduard, aloud. "It must be the butterfly that's holding it all together."

And Wilhelm exclaimed:

"Oh, what a rare specimen! Where was it caught, and by whom?"

He pushed back his chair, and, with the simplicity of a child, went over to where Diana sat, in order to get a closer view of the exquisite thing as it nestled in the soft folds of her low-cut gown. And it was only now, at such proximity, that he realized how low indeed the neck was cut. His young, inexperienced eyes lingered on Diana's bosom, his senses became confused with the delicate aroma that rose from her person, he forgot the passage of time. Four pairs of eyes, glaring their protest and reproof, were fixed questioningly upon Wilhelm, each man wondering when the indiscreet inspection would come to an end. Diana, who had turned towards Wilhelm to show him the ornament, did not see the men's expression, but she sensed disapproval in the air by the silence that had fallen on the company. She was rather amused by the little scene, and allowed half a minute to go by before turning away and saying:

"Your soup will be cold, Wilhelm, and it's turtle soup today, you know, tortoise, the sort upon which an elephant can stand, a Buddha sitting on its back."

Wilhelm took a deep breath, and, as he hastened back to his place, he was heard murmuring: "Marvellous!" but whether he was referring to the turtle, or to the butterfly, or to Diana's bosom, not one of the four men could decide.

Conversation now became general. There was talk about sacred rites among the Hindus; Scherer gave an account of the tortoise-shell mausoleum in Kandy, and told how he had hurriedly left the place and gone back to Colombo, because a company of English snobs had taken possession of the little lake, and how relieved he felt when he got back to the vision of the infinite sea. Diana had some interesting things to say concerning the customs in Upper Egypt, and about camel-riding, and her first experience of sea-sickness as she crouched between the animal's humps. Franklin spoke of the serpentine movements of the elephant's trunk, and went on to refer to the anomalous aspect of this strange creature as seen amid the haunts of men. Finally he opened a discussion on the price of ivory, which seemed greatly to interest Scherer. "Yes," he was saying, "I remember my awe when the first tusk was put in my hand and how I turned to the skinny little hunter to say that such a beautiful thing was certainly worth all the perils of the chase. To which he answered: 'Of course you know that out of one tusk six billiard balls can be made.''

"All my sympathies go to the elephant," exclaimed Kyril, rousing himself from his silence. "The futile uses to which such fine things and so much labour are put..."

"Quite right! Quite right!" exclaimed Eduard. "I'm wholeheartedly a partisan of the pachyderms. All politicians should belong to that race, and to that race alone!"

"It's a pity you speak ironically," retorted Kyril, "for what you say happens to be true."

The prince's lips twitched, then he said:

"By the time the present generation of diplomats, the spiders, have died out, I fear the elephants will have been exterminated by the Austrian consular service under the leadership of Dr. Franklin as head huntsman! Whom shall we then have left to send as ambassador to St. Petersburg, I should like to know?"

"Reynard the Fox," laughed Scherer.

"On the contrary," said Eduard, "the revolutionists here wish it might be the lamb!"

"Neither will do," put in Kyril gravely, "but, rather, Herr Scherer himself—on the understanding of course that he has accepted our ideas in their entirety."

Although Scherer's acceptance of these ideas was only partial and, even then, mainly theoretical, he felt more flattered by the Russian's implied appreciation than he would have been by an official summons to such a post. Nevertheless, he did not betray his feelings, merely answering:

"I'm no more than a business man. You'd better try to convince the prince, so that in the future when he is appointed to some foreign post, he may work hand in hand with us, democratically. Advanced ideas coming from abroad have a much better chance of acceptance at home, you know!"

"Compromise," muttered Kyril disdainfully. "Parson Brand says: 'All or nothing!'"

Since Scherer had spoken, the prince had kept his eyes on the Russian, considering him attentively. Again tonight he reacted as he had always reacted to similar talks during the past weeks, when this slogan had been voiced, and it seemed to him that the Russian's fanaticism was a serious obstacle to fulfilment. He intervened by saying:

"Would you appoint Ibsen's Brand as chargé d'affaires in Christiania?"

"He'd be a trifle old for the job, I fear," answered Kyril.

"You would, then, introduce an age-limit for diplomats? Treat them as the Fiji Islanders treat their old folk? At sixty lead them on to the rostrum whence, if they proved no longer capable of maintaining their equilibrium, they would fall to the ground!"

"The Russians are right," cried Franklin enthusiastically; "young people are better for such posts."

"Bravo! I think so too," exclaimed Wilhelm, the youngest of the party, who, as usual, had been silently and reverently watching the others while they talked.

For the time being, the problem was settled in a chorus of merry laughter, which suddenly ceased when Scherer rose as if to deliver a formal speech.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, smiling round the circle. "I have no intention of introducing etiquette of any sort on board the 'Excelsior,' but, since we have been talking of diplomats and of youth, I should like us all to give our good wishes to one among us who, this day, has added another year to the tale of his young decades—I drink to the health of our friend and my guest, His Highness, Prince Eduard!"

The men had risen. Clicking his heels together and bowing ceremoniously, the prince touched glasses with his host. Then he turned to Diana and found her gazing up at him, her eyes dimmed with tears. Memories of another dinner party crowded upon him. It had been in the Balkans; she had had a lover at the time; he himself had been filled with envy. Now, as he bent towards her, Eduard became poignantly aware of the caresses the dead man must have given to the Diana-like body before him, a body which he had glimpsed for a fleeting moment from a distant vantage point in a public gathering. The lure of the woman was strong upon him.

All had by now clinked glasses and had drunk the toast. There followed an awkward pause, so usual in the train of such ceremonies. Then Wilhelm's voice broke in on the silence.

"I thought something must be up directly I saw champagne glasses on the table!"

"So we have an Almanach de Gotha on board the man-of-war," said Eduard, turning to Scherer.

"You'll have to own up to your age now," cried Kyril with unwonted eagerness.

Whereat Diana thought: "Does he hope to be the younger of the two?" And, as if to shield the prince, she said hastily to Kyril: "You, too, will have to make the same confession."

"After His Highness!"

"Guess," said Eduard turning to Diana.

She hesitated.

"According to the Almanach, Prince Eduard is nine-and-twenty years of age," said Scherer, meaning to help the prince out of an embarrassing situation. "Kürschner, in which we'd be bound to find Dr. Sergievitch's name, is unfortunately not on board, and I'm afraid we'll have some difficulty in finding a copy among the Ionian Islands."

"Twenty-nine, likewise," Kyril informed them simply.

Diana, who was always responsive to the mystical in things, and endowed with a physical love of youth, felt moved and excited as she asked:

"Which of you is the younger?"

Her eyes travelled from one to the other.

Eduard and Kyril leaned across the table; they gave the impression of two wrestlers as each gazed in his opponent's eyes. Their companions were silent witnesses of this soundless duel. Kyril at this moment appeared to be endowed with superior strength, and seemed to be hiding something which his vis-à-vis was endeavouring to divine. A moment or two passed. Then Wilhelm's voice again broke the tension:

"They were born on the same day!" he cried exultantly.

"How do you know that?" retorted Kyril, his face darkening, his manner rough and imperious.

"I—I guessed it from the way you behaved," stammered Wilhelm, abashed.

"Is he right?" asked Diana eagerly, leaning forward in her turn.

"Is he right?" chimed in Franklin and Scherer simultaneously.

Kyril sat back in his chair, folded his table napkin, and answered gruffly:

"Yes, he's right."

Diana and Eduard drew themselves up, completely taken aback.

"Then we can seize the opportunity of wishing you many happy returns, too," said Scherer jocularly, hoping to relieve the tension.

"Not today," protested Kyril, "our Russian seventeenth of April does not fall due until your thirtieth."

"Still, you were born under the same star," said Diana.

"Star? A new kind of decoration," mocked Eduard, trying to conceal his excitement. "Do you know anything about such matters, my mystical foster-brother?"

"I don't believe in such things," answered Kyril.

Scherer laughed, and Diana, too, could not hide her mirth as she said merrily:

"You were both born in the constellation of the Ram."

"Hence these horns," commented Eduard.

"Wool," said Kyril.

"Maybe, likewise, the power of growth, a future vita nuova," put in Diana.

"Both of us—identical," said Kyril sullenly; like someone who disapproved of such pleasantries and felt drawn into retaliating in spite of his better judgment. "How will you, then, be able to tell us apart?"

"Your horoscopes will not be identical because the actual days of your birth differ. My father could tell you all that with precision. I don't know much about such things myself, or, at most, if you care to show me your palms...?"

Both men stretched out their left hands towards Diana who pushed her dessert plate aside. She drew the hands towards her, placed her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, then looked from one palm to the other while the company sat eagerly waiting for her to speak.

"How very different they are," she murmured after a while, "so many lines crossing one another on your palm, Prince. Here, in the long line of your life, a kink as it were, cutting it short, after which the line becomes firmer. Head line good, decidedly domineering. The line of heart seems to peter out here, but it rises in the Jupiter mound."

"May I ask what course it follows?" queried the prince.

"It gives pride of place to love," answered Diana in a matter-of-fact voice. "The mound of Venus is, however, not so pronounced. The fingers are contemplative rather than grasping. But this middle one, so square when compared with the others, that brings us to the Scales, equilibrium." She had not touched him while thus telling his fortune. Now she looked him in the face as she added: "On the whole, a lucky hand, Prince."

He turned his hand over on the table, took hers in his and kissed it. Then:

"And now for my rival," he said.

Kyril meanwhile, had been sitting motionless, following every word, staring enviously at Eduard's long fingers. Before she began to speak, Diana looked up into the Russian's face and found his eyes fixed inquiringly on her own.

"This hand," she began even more sententiously than heretofore, "has fewer lines. A wonderful line of fate. It rises here, below the line of life, and runs up in two great curves to join the lines of the head and the heart, straight up into the mound of Jupiter: and there is a star."

"What does the star signify?" asked Kyril, dully.

"A great career," answered Diana, so frigidly that Eduard felt uneasy at such a display of hostility. "But the line of life is not good at this point, it divides in two, very decidedly, and it is not long."

"How can you tell that?" queried Kyril harshly, bending forward so eagerly that his fair hair caressed her cheek. She did not draw back, but said calmly, pointing to the spot again:

"By this."

"That's all right. What else do you see?"

"The head line does not join the line of life. That betokens fanaticism. Mound of Venus, very strongly developed; line of heart, simple. The fingers are grasping fingers," she concluded, raising her head. "A square hand: more will than intelligence. Please forgive me, I'm keeping you all too long at table."

When, later, they sat in the smoking cabin over cigarettes and coffee, their wicker chairs drawn together in a circle, the conversation drifted from suggestion to sleep-walking and to premonitions of death. From time to time Wilhelm had dragged one or the other of the circle to the railing to look at the phosphorescence in the water. These ecstatic excursions had been interpolated into the general talk which see-sawed between acceptance and denial of extraordinary phenomena. Franklin could contemplate the cosmos only from the mystical view-point. Scherer, as a man of the world who had never wholly denied the possibility of abnormal happenings, endeavoured always to anchor himself on certainties, as the only safe harbourage. But despite his best endeavours the springs of conversation gradually dried up.

The prince and the Russian contributed nothing to the entertainment. The strange coincidence of their birthdates, separated merely by the vagaries of the calendar, the variations in their fortunes as read in the lines of their hands, the aura emanating from the clothing and the personality of the woman in their midst: all this, and more especially the strangely prophetic confirmation of her own consciousness, lay heavy upon the spirits of the two men, one of whom had been dancing attendance upon Diana for many months in spite of prejudices of race and rank, while the other held aloof from her, hostile and suspicious, and yet attracted to her in his own despite.

The young woman herself was under the spell of her own perceptions. She felt bemused. As always when things lying without the circle of the tangible sent a ray of light towards her like a beacon from a distant port, she seemed to be gathered up into the mysterious in a way that appeared to her almost offensive, so greatly did she revere her own aptitudes and so much did she hate to tamper with these secret forces of her being. In such moods the incentive which her essentially productive nature was in the habit of giving to those who came in contact with her, was stilled; it was as if she were tossed amid dark and gloomy waters, and thoughts knocked at her heart, thoughts which at other times she sought to handle collectedly.

She felt the warm night wind on her throat and arms; her hand moved slowly, as if half asleep, towards the butterfly on her bosom which, in rhythm with the rock crystal pendant, rose and fell with her breathing; her imagination, more alert now than her eyes which lay deep in the shadows, drank in the luminous movement of the waves, sensing their luminosity rather than perceiving it. And as she lay thus pensive and dreamy she felt acutely how alone she was, and how impossible it was for these friends and lovers around her to put an end to such solitude as hers.

Was such a thing desirable she asked herself. Could passion, once more aroused, be lovelier than the mute sympathy of air and sea and death and night and stars? She looked up, searching for the Scales, and became uneasy when she could not make out the constellation amid the clouds which delicately veiled the firmament.

Abruptly she got up, swept by the astonished Wilhelm whose eyes followed her movements inquisitively, and made for the bows. The waters were no longer aglow; the sky was partially overcast. She became conscious of her youth as the wind played around her shoulders, she saw the rise and fall of her breast beneath the diaphanous folds of her gown, she felt the sensual delight of the soft wrap covering her bare arms, and the dead butterfly adorning the low-cut neck of her dress seemed more brilliant and more alluring than the waves.

She threw back her shawl so that she might fully enjoy the warm caress of the wind. Was not all this the prelude to an embrace? Was she, a young, beautiful, and independent woman, to continue living, as she had lived for a year and more, like a cloistered nun?—— Why does he hesitate? Why does he not come, unannounced, tonight, appear suddenly in my cabin, this respectable, ardent cynic, and forget his habitual irony and decorum in the ecstasy of an endless night? Do I frighten the men who refrain from seizing me in the first hour of our acquaintance?

She returned to the circle of her friends, excused herself as she lightly shook each by the hand, and withdrew to her cabin. Hastily dismissing Mary, she took a seat in front of her threefold mirror and hearkened to the murmur of the waters beneath the port-hole. She pushed back the wrap from her shoulders, and, as if her own fingers were those of a lover beginning to unclothe his sweetheart, she started to unhook her gown. With a slow and voluptuous movement, she raised her arms above her head, so that the frail bodice slipped down to the broad waistband which she had loosened likewise. She pressed the hard crystal between her breasts and held the dead butterfly against her bosom. Her other arm was still upraised to frame her curly head. For a long time she sat there, gazing at herself in the mirror. Then she rose. With a single motion the dress and her underwear slid to her feet; then stepping free, as from a pupa-case, she again contemplated herself in the glass.