Front matter (continued 2)

"Were you worried?"

The demurely malicious glance she flung at me became a laugh. She turned to Smith:

"Did he think somebody might kidnap his young and silly housekeeper?" she inquired. "Pas de chance! I am horridly wise!"—she touched her forehead with the tip of one finger—"and a thousand years old!"—she laid one hand lightly over her heart. And turned to me. "I am a thousand years of age," she repeated, smiling. "Such as I are not kidnapped, Monsieur O'Ryan. Au contraire. I myself am far more likely to kidnap——"

She looked Smith gaily in the eye "—some agreeable young man—some day." And very slowly her gray eyes included me.

Then she tossed the reins to Raoul who had come up beside the cart:

"A protean moment," she said to me, "and I shall reappear as a very presentable waitress to wait upon you at luncheon."

And off went this amazing housekeeper of mine dancing lightly away across the grass with the buckles on her little peasant slippers twinkling and every blue ribbon a-flutter.

I turned and looked at Raoul. He returned my gaze with an odd smile.

"Of what," said I, "are you thinking?"

"I was thinking," he replied seriously, "that the world is a very droll place,—agreeable for the gay, but hell for those born without a sense of humor."

VI

MASTER AND MAID

I had become tired of following Smith about and of trying to keep an eye on Clelia. The little minx was so demure that it seemed difficult to believe she deliberately offered Smith opportunities for philandering. Otherwise my household caused me no anxiety; everything went smoothly. Thusis waited on table and ran the place, Josephine Vannis cooked to perfection, Raoul had started a garden and the bottling works; and no tourists had bothered us by interrupting the régime and demanding food and shelter.

Outwardly ours was a serene and emotionless life, undisturbed by that bloody frenzy which agitated the greater surface of the globe.

Here in the sunny silence of our little valley ringed by snow peaks, the soft thunder of some far avalanche or the distant tinkle of cow-bells were the loudest interruptions that startled us from the peaceful inertia consequent upon good food and idle hours.

Outwardly as I say, calm brooded all about us. True the Zurich and Berne newspapers stirred me up, and the weekly packages of New York papers which Smith and I received caused a tense silence in our rooms whither we always retired to read them.

Smith once remarked that it was odd I never received any Chilean papers. To which I replied that it seemed queer no Norwegian newspapers came to him.

We let it rest there. As for my household I never saw Josephine Vannis at all except by accident in the early evening when I sometimes noticed her in the distance strolling with Raoul.

On Clelia, I kept an unquiet eye as I have said. Thusis I saw only on strictly business interviews. And Smith thought it strange that there was so much business to be discussed between us. But every day I felt it my duty to go over my household accounts with Thusis, checking up every item. In these daily conferences there were, of course, all sorts of matters to consider, such as the farm and dairy reports from Raoul, the bottling reports, daily sales of eggs, butter, and bottled spring-water—a cart arriving from Zurich every morning to take away these surplus items to the Grand Hotel, Baur-au-Lac, with which Thusis had made a thrifty contract.

This was a very delightful part of the day to me,—the hour devoted to business with Thusis, while Smith fumed in his room. Possibly Clelia fumed with him—I was afraid of that—and it was the only rift in the lute.

Every morning I tried to prolong that business interview with Thusis,—she looked so distractingly pretty in her peasant garb. But though her gray eyes were ever on duty and her winning smile flashed now and then across the frontier of laughter, always and almost with malice, she held me to the matter of business under discussion, discouraging all diversions I made toward other topics, refusing to accompany me on gay excursions into personalities, resisting any approach toward that little spot of unconventional ground upon which we had once stood face to face.

For since that time when, for hours afterward, my hand remained conscious of her soft, cool hand's light contact—since that curious compact between us which had settled her status, and my own, here under this common roof above us, she had permitted no lighter conversation to interrupt our business conferences, no other subject to intrude. Only now and then I caught a glimpse of tiny devils dancing in her gray eyes; only at long intervals was the promise of the upcurled corners of her mouth made good by the swift, sweet laughter always hidden there.

There was no use attempting any less impersonal footing any more; Thusis simply evaded it, remaining either purposely dull and irresponsive or, gathering up her accounts, she would rise, curtsey, and back out with a gravity of features and demeanor that her mocking eyes denied.

Once, as I have said, I discovered a fishing rod in the attic, dug some worms, and started out upon conservation bent. And encountering Thusis digging dandelions for salad behind the garden, explained to her my attire and implements. As it was strictly a matter of business she consented to go with me as far as the brook. There, by the bridge in the first pool, she caught the first trout. And, having showed me how, retreated, resolutely repelling all suggestions that she take a morning off, and defying me with a gaiety that made her eyes brilliant with delighted malice.

"It was my duty to show you how Swiss trout are caught," she called back to me, always retreating down the leafy path—"but when you propose a pleasure party to your housekeeper—oh, Don Michael, you betray low tastes and I am amazed at you and I beg you most earnestly to remember the Admiral."

Whereupon I was stung into action and foolish enough to suppose I could overtake her. Where she vanished I don't know. There was not a sound in the wood. I was ass enough to call—even to appeal in a voice so sentimental that I blush to remember it now.

And at last, discomfited and sulky, I went back to my fishing. But hers remained the only trout in my basket. Smith and I ate it, baked with parsley, for luncheon, between intermittent inquiries from Smith regarding the fewness of the catch.

And now, it appeared, somebody had already told him that Thusis and I had gone fishing together that day. Who the devil had revealed that fact? Clelia, no doubt,—having been informed by Thusis. And no doubt Thusis had held me up to ridicule.

So now, at the hour when our daily business conference approached, instead of seating myself as usual at the table in my sitting-room, I took my fishing-rod, creel, a musty and water-warped leather fly-book, and went into Smith's room.

"Suppose we go fishing," I suggested, knowing he'd refuse on the chance of a tête-à-tête with Clelia the minute I was out of sight.

He began to explain that he had letters to write, and I laughed in derision and sent my regards to all the folks in dear old Norway.

"Go to the deuce," said I. "Flirt with my chamber-maid if you want to, but Thusis will take your head off—"

"Isn't she going with you?"

"—When she returns," I continued, vexed and red at his impudent conclusion. It was perfectly true that I meant to take Thusis fishing, but it was not Smith's business to guess my intentions.

"You annoy me," I added, passing him with a scowl. At which he merely grinned.

In the hallway I encountered Clelia in cap and apron, very diligent with her duster.

"Clelia," said I pleasantly, "has Raoul brought the mail?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"Where is it?"

"There was only a bill from the Grand Hotel for cartage."

"What!" said I in pretense of dismay, "no letter yet from Mr. Smith's wife? And seven of his children down with whooping-cough!"

"W-wife!" stammered Clelia, her blue eyes becoming enormous. "S-seven children!"

"Seven in Christiania," I explained sadly, "the other eleven at school near Bergen. Poor fellow. His suspense must be dreadful."

I'm no actor; I saw immediately in Clelia's face that I had overplayed my part as well as the total of Smith's progeny, for the color came swiftly back and she shot at me a glance anything but demure.

"The other eleven," I explained, "were by his first three wives."

Clelia, dusting furiously, looked around at me over her shoulder.

"At least," she said, "he's done his duty by his country."

"W-what!" I stammered.

"The population of Norway is so very small," she added gaily. And went on with her dusting.

"Minx," thought I to myself as I marched down stairs and out toward the fountain where, from the servants' wing of the chalet Thusis could not fail to observe me. And she did. She appeared, presently, account books under one arm. Out of the subtle corner of my subtlest eye—the left one—I observed her. And with surpassing cunning I selected a yellow fly from the battered book and tied it on my leader.

"Monsieur!"

"Good-morning, Thusis. We're going fishing. So if you'll ask Josephine to put up some war lunch for us—"

"Has Monsieur forgotten his daily business interview?" she inquired smilingly.

"Not at all. But we're going to conserve time as well as food, Thusis. We can fish and consult at the same time."

"But—"

"All waste must cease," I said firmly. "We mustn't waste even a minute in the day. And if we can do two things at the same time it is our economic duty to do them." I smiled at her. "I shall dig worms," said I, "for two, while you prepare lunch for two. That is a wonderful way of economizing time and labor, isn't it, Thusis?"

She smiled, bit her lip, as though regretting an indiscretion, looked up at the cloudless sky, let her gray eyes wander from one snowy peak to the next, glanced almost insolently at me, then smiled with that delicious impulse characteristic of her.

"You know you have no business to take me fishing," she said. "Your cleverness is not Machiavellian; it is Michael-valian. It doesn't deceive me for one moment, Señor Michael!"

I laughed, picked up a stable-fork that stood against the cow-barn:

"Worms for two; luncheon for two," said I.

"I don't like that juxtaposition!" she protested. "Do you really wish me to go with you? Why won't you sit here on the edge of the pool and go over these accounts?"

"Conservation of time and energy forbid doing one thing when two things can be accomplished at the——"

"You are absurd!"

I went over to the barnyard and began to dig.

"Hasten, Thusis," I called to her. "I'll be ready in ten minutes."

"I've a good mind not to go," she said.

"You've a good mind," said I, disinterring a fine fat worm.

"I have a mind, anyway, and it counsels me not to go fishing with you, Don Michael."

"Argue with it," said I. "It's a reasonable mind, Thusis, and is open to conviction. Prove to it that you ought to go fishing."

"Don Michael, you are ridiculous."

"Let it be a modest lunch," said I, "nourishing and sufficient. But not a feast, Thusis. Don't put in any wreaths of roses, or any tambourines. But you can stick a fry-pan into the basket, with a little lard on the side, and I'll show you how we cook trout in the woods at home."

"In Chile?"

"In the Adirondacks," said I, smiling.

I went on digging and accumulating that popular lure for trout not carried in the fly-books of expert anglers, but known to the neophyte as the "Barn-yard Hackle."

Once I glanced over my shoulder. Thusis was not there. Presently, and adroitly dissembling my anxiety by a carefully camouflaged series of sidelong squints I discovered her near the kitchen-wing of the chalet talking earnestly to Josephine.

And so it happened that, having garnered a sufficiency of Barn-yard hackles, I went to the fountain pool to wash my hands.

And when, with playful abandon, I stood drying them upon my knickerbockers, I saw Thusis emerge from the house carrying my pack-basket.

She came up rather slowly.

"Here is your lunch," she said, looking at me with an inscrutable expression suggesting amusement and annoyance in an illogical combination.

"You mean our lunch," said I.

"I mean your lunch."

"Aren't you coming, Thusis?"

I looked into the pack-basket and discovered her account books in it.

"An oversight," she said, calmly. "Give them to me."

I started to fish them out and caught sight of the package of lunch.

"Good heavens!" said I, "there is twice too much for one!"

She appeared to be greatly disturbed by the discovery.

"Josephine has made a dreadful mistake," she said. "She has put up lunch enough for two!"

"It mustn't be wasted," said I, gravely. "I'm afraid you'll have to come fishing with me after all, Thusis."

There appeared to be no other way out of it. At least neither of us suggested any other way.

"Oh, dear," she said, looking up at me, and the very devil was in her gray eyes.

Which discovery preoccupied me when she went back to the house for her hat and for another rod which she had, it seemed, discovered in the laundry, all equipped for business.

The agreeable tingle of subdued excitement permeated me as she returned with the rod but without any hat.

"I don't need one," she said, calmly, pulling out several hair pins.

And then I saw a thick mass of molten gold tumble down; and the swift white fingers of Thusis dividing it into two heavy braids—a thrilling sight—and once, in the thrall of that enchantment where I stood motionless to watch her at this lovely office, I became aware of her lifted eyes—two celestial assassins intent on doing me deep harm.

Then, still busy with her hair, she moved slowly forward across the grass beside me, silently, almost stealthily—for, in the slow and supple grace of her I seemed to divine something almost menacing to me.

Her account books and rod were in my pack-basket. She sauntered along the shadow-flecked path beside me, at first paying me scant attention, but singing carelessly to herself in a demi-voix snatches of any vagrant melody that floated through her mind.

I recognized none of them. One strange little refrain seemed to keep on recurring to her at intervals:

—"And Aphrodite's throat was white

As lilies opening at night

In Naxos,

In Naxos.

And red were Aphrodite's lips—

And blue her eyes and white her hips

As roses, sky, and surf that clips

The golden shore of Tenedos.

O Tenedos, my Tenedos,

Set in the purple sea!

O Naxos, my Naxos,

I hear you calling me!

The old gods have gone away;

I follow them with feet astray,

But in my heart I'll faithful be

To Tenedos and Naxos!"

She strolled on, singing to herself, an absent look in her starry eyes, switching idly at the leaves with some dead stalk she had picked up. And no matter what other fragments of melody occurred to her she was ever coming back to her odd little song of Naxos and of Tenedos, where flowers and sky and sea matched Aphrodite's charms.

Now and again I was conscious of a leisurely sideways glance from her as though indifferently marking my continued but quite uninteresting existence in the landscape.

When we came to the wooden bridge she rested both hands on the rail and looked down at the limpid greenish pool. But her gaze seemed serious and remote, and I became quite sure she was not thinking about trout.

However, I rigged up her rod for her and was preparing to impale a worm upon her hook when she noticed what I was about and remarked that she preferred an artificial fly.

"That one," she added, coming up beside me and looking over my shoulder at the open fly-book in my hand.

So, that matter settled, we took the leafy path which ran through ferns along the northern bank of the stream.

VII

CONSERVATION AND CONVERSATION

Thusis hooked the first trout. It made a prodigious swirl in the pool and rushed to and fro in the shadowy depths—a slim, frantic phantom lacing the crystalline water with flashes of pallid fire.

She drew in the trout splashing and spattering in all its rainbow glory, and I thankfully thumped it into Nirvana and placed it upon a catafalque of wet green moss in my basket. Thusis looked on calmly while I performed the drudgery of the episode, and I heard her singing carelessly to herself:

"The old gods have gone away;

I follow them with feet astray,

But in my heart I'll faithful be

To Tenedos and Naxos!"

"There seems to be a dryad or two left," said I, looking up over my shoulder where I squatted by the brookside, scrubbing my hands in the under-water gravel.

"You mean me," she nodded absently, loosening and freeing her leader and line.

"I sure do, Thusis."

"You're so funny," she said in the same tranquil, detached voice, as though she were some young chatelaine and I her gillie.

We went on to the next pool where the green crystal water gushed in and spread out calmly through the woodland, reflecting every fern and tree.

The silken whistle of her cast made a pretty whispering sound in the mossy silence, and I watched her where she stood slim and straight as a silvery sapling searching the far still reaches of the water with the tiny tuft of tinseled feathers until the surface of the placid pool was shattered into liquid splinters by the splash of a trout, and her line vibrated and hummed like a taut violin string.

Like lightning the convulsive battle was joined there in the woodland depths and the girl, all fire and grace, swayed like a willow under the furious rhythmic rushes of the unseen fish.

Click-click went her reel, and the feathery whirr of the line accented the silence. Then that living opalescent thing sprang quivering out of its element, and fell back, conquered, in a shower of opal rain.

Toward noon we came to a pool into which poured the stream with a golden sound between two boulders mantled thick with moss. And here Thusis seated herself and laid aside her rod.

"I am hungry," she said, looking over her shoulder at me with the same aloof composure that all the morning had reversed our rôles as master and maid.

But even as she spoke she seemed to realize the actual situation: a delicate color came into her cheeks and then she laughed.

"Isn't it funny?" she said, springing to her feet. "Such presumption! Pray condescend to unsling the basket and I shall give Don Michael his lunch."

"Don Michael," said I, "will continue to do the dirty work on this expedition. Sit down, Thusis."

"Oh, I couldn't permit——"

"Oh, yes, you could. You've been behaving like a sporting duchess all this morning. Continue in that congenial rôle."

"What did you say?" she demanded, her gray eyes frosty and intent on me.

"I said you've been behaving like a duchess."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it's so."

She sat on her mossy throne, regarding me intently and unsmilingly.

"Don't say that again,—please," she said, coldly.

"I was merely jesting."

"I know. But please don't say it in that way. Don't use that expression."

"Very well," said I, not relishing the snub. And I laid out the lunch in silence, during which operation I could feel Thusis was watching my sulky features with amusement.

To make sure I looked up at her when I had finished, and caught the little devils laughing at me out of both her eyes.

"Luncheon's ready," said I, infuriated by her mockery.

"Monsieur is served," said Thusis, in a voice so diabolically meek that I burst out laughing; and the girl, as though flinging discretion to the summer breezes, leaped to her feet with a gay little echo of my laughter and dropped down on the moss beside the woodland banquet.

"What do I care after all!" she said. "From the beginning I've been at no pains to deceive you. So in the name of the old gods let us break bread together."

She picked up a bit of bread, sprinkled a pinch of salt on it, broke it, and offered me half with a most adorable air. And we ate together under the inviolate roof of the high blue sky.

"Now," she said, "you'll never betray me."

"You knew that in the beginning."

"Did I? I don't know. I've been perfectly careless concerning you, Don Michael."

"Was it from instinctive confidence, Thusis, or out of disdain?"

The girl laughed, not looking up but continuing to poke for olives with a fork too large for the neck of the flask:

"Disdain you, Don Michael? How could I?"

"I sometimes believe you do. You behave very often as though I were a detail of the surrounding landscape and quite as negligible."

"But it's an attractive landscape and not negligible," she insisted, still poking for elusive olives. "Your simile is at fault, Monsieur O'Ryan."

"Thusis," said I, gravely consuming a sandwich, "you have made fun of me ever since I laid eyes on you."

"You began it."

"How?"

"You made fun of my red hair."

"It is beautiful hair."

"Indeed?"

"You know it. You know perfectly well how pretty you are."

"Señor!"

"In fact," said I, offering myself another sandwich, "you are unusually ornamental. I concede it. I even admit that you resemble The Laughing Girl."

"The cherished photograph on Monsieur's dresser! Oh, that is too much flattery. What would the Admiral think to hear you say such things to your housekeeper! Don Michael, you are young and you are headed for trouble. I beg of you to remember your ancestors."

"How about yours, Thusis?"

"Mine? Oh, they were poor Venetians. Probably they ran gondolas for the public—the taxis of those days, Don Michael—and lived on the tips they received."

"Thusis?"

"Monsieur?"

"I'd be grateful for a tip—if you don't mind."

"A tip?"

"Yes. Just a little one."

The girl held out her glass and I filled it with cool Moselle.

"You're such a nice boy," she said, and sipped her wine, looking at me all the while. She was so pretty that it hurt.

"A tip," she repeated musingly. "That is the Anglo-Saxon slang for information. Is it then that you request information?"

"If you are willing."

"About what, pray?"

"About yourself, Thusis."

"That is unworthy curiosity."

"No, it isn't curiosity."

She elevated her delicate nose, very slightly. "What, then, do you term it, Don Michael?"

"Sympathy."

"Oh la! Sympathy? Oh, I know that kind. It is born out of the idleness of speculation and developed with an admixture of sentimental curiosity always latent in men."

She laughed: "It's nothing but emotion, Monsieur. Men call it budding friendship. But men really care for no women."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's true. Men seek friendship among men. Men like few or no women, but almost any female. That is the real truth. Why dodge it?"

"How old are you, Thusis?"

"Not old—as you mean it."

She had finished her luncheon, and now she leaned over and bathed her lips and fingers in the icy stream. There, like some young woodland thing out of the golden age of vanished gods she hovered, playing at the glimmering water's edge, scooping up handfuls of golden gravel from the bottom and letting them slide back through her dripping fingers.

"I'll tell you this," she said, looking at the water: "I don't like men. I never did. Any I might have been inclined to like I had already been born to hate.... You don't understand, do you?"

"No."

She smiled, sat erect, and dried her fingers on her handkerchief.

"Be flattered," she said. "No other man before you has had even a glimpse of my real self. And I really don't know why I've given you that much. I ask myself. I don't know.... But,"—and her sweet, reckless laughter flashed—"the very devil seemed to possess me when I first saw you, Don Michael. I was amazingly careless. But you were so funny! I was indiscreet. But you were so solemn and so typically and guilelessly masculine."

"Was I?" said I, getting redder and redder.

"Oh, yes!" she cried, "and you are still! You are all man—the most comprehensive type of your sex—the most logical, and the most delightfully transparent! Oh, you are funny, Don Michael. You don't know it; you don't suspect it; but you are! And that is why I read you to the depths of your nice boyish mind and heart, and felt that I need be at no pains to play my little rôle with you."

"Then," said I, "if you consider me harmless, why not trust me further?"

"I do trust you. You know I'm not born a servant. You know, also, that nevertheless I'm in service. So is my sister. So is my friend, Josephine Vannis. So is my friend, Raoul Despres. Well, then! It seems to me that I have trusted you, and that you know a great deal about us all."

"That is not very much to know," said I, so naïvely that Thusis showered the woods with her delicious laughter.

"Of course it isn't much, Don Michael. But just think how you can amuse yourself in dull moments by trying to guess the rest!"

"I can't imagine," said I, "what your object may be in taking service here in this little lonely valley in the Swiss Alps. If, as seems probable, you all are agents of some power now at war—what on earth is the use of coming here?"

Thusis smiled at me, then, resting on one arm, leaned over the cloth on the moss and made me a little signal to incline one ear toward her. When I did so she placed her lips close to my ear:

"You have promised always to treat us like your servants in the presence of others. Do you remember?"

I nodded.

"Then I ask no more of you than that, Don Michael.... Until your country enters the war."

Her breath close to my ear—the girl's nearness, and the sweet, fresh youth of her, all were doing the business for me.

"Thusis?"

"Yes?"

"Lean nearer. I want to whisper to you."

She inclined her dainty head: the fragrance of her hair interfered with my articulation:

"My country," said I, "is not likely to go to war.... But I am."

She said, smilingly: "The fine army of Chile is organized and disciplined on the German plan. Doubtless this fact, and the influence of German drill-masters, prejudices many Chileans in favor of entering this war."

I placed my lips close to her little ear:

"Don't be silly," I whispered.

At that she straightened up with a breathless little laugh and sat looking at me.

"You knew where I stood," said I. "Why practice deception?"

"Yes," said she, "you are practically Yankee."

"So is that Viking, Smith."

"I know. And the Yankees are at war."

"They are, God bless them."

"God bless them," she said; and her face grew very still and serious.

After a silence: "There is a common ground," she said, "on which we both may stand. And that is no-man's land. To redeem it I am long since enlisted in the crusade.... Your heart, Monsieur, is enlisted too.... I knew that.... Else I had never trusted you."

"How did you know?"

She shrugged: "Long ago we had all necessary information concerning you and your Viking friend. Yet for all that it was not prudent for me to so carelessly reveal myself to you.... But when I saw you—" she laughed mischievously—"as I have admitted, already, you inspired me to indiscreet behavior. And I didn't resist—knowing you to be safe."

"Safe?"

"Certainly. And so I permitted myself to relax—a little."

"In the cellar?"

"Yes.... And I nearly paid for it, didn't I?"

"I ought to have kissed you," said I with sulky conviction.

"Do you think so?"

"I'm sorry I didn't."

"I'm sorry, too." She sprang to her feet, laughing and scared: "Wait! Listen. I'm sorry only because it was the only moment that ever could have happened in my life when I might have submitted to that simple and bourgeoise experience known as being kissed. Now it can never happen again, Don Michael. And I shall journey, unsaluted, to my virgin tomb."

She lifted her gray eyes sparkling with malice:

"Because a young man was too timid to offer me the curious and unique experience of being kissed, I must expire, eventually, in total ignorance of that interesting process."

Her face changed subtly as I started to my feet, and something in the beautiful altered features halted me.

After a moment's silence: "It's perfectly rotten of me," she said slowly. "But you, also, seem to realize that it can't happen."

"You mean it can't happen without forfeiting your friendship, Thusis?"

"Without incurring my hatred," she said in a curiously still voice, her eyes as cold as grayest ice. "Do it, if you like," she added. "I deserve it. But I shall hate myself and detest you.... Is it worth it? Seriously, Mr. O'Ryan, is your revenge worth my deepest enmity?"

I shrugged. "Thusis," said I pleasantly, "you take yourself very seriously. Don't you?"

"Don't you!" she demanded, flushing.

"I'm sorry, but I really can't." And I lighted a cigarette and picked up my fishing-rod.

"You ask me," I continued, switching my flies out over the water, "whether the possibly interesting operation of kissing you would be worth your cataclysmic resentment. How can I guess? It might not even be worth the effort involved—on my part. To be frank, Thusis, I'm not at all convinced that you'd be worth kissing."

"Is that your opinion?" inquired the girl, nibbling at her under lip and regarding me out of eyes that darkled and sparkled with something or other I could not quite define.

"That is my opinion," said I pleasantly. "Besides, I have a photograph on my dresser which if chastely and respectfully saluted, would, no doubt, prove quite as responsive to a casual caress as would you. And without any disagreeable results."

"Do you do that?" she asked, coloring brightly to the temples, her teeth still busy with her lip.

"I don't always make a practice of doing it."

"Have you ever done it?"

"I haven't happened to."

"Do you intend to?"

"What's the matter with you, Thusis?" I retorted impatiently. "Does it concern you what I do to that picture?"

"Yes, it does," she retorted, turning deeply pink.

"In what way?"

"You say the photograph of the Laughing Girl resembles me. And if you are under that impression I do not wish you to take liberties with it. You have no right to—to kiss a picture because you think it looks like—like somebody you don't dare kiss!"

Her flushed audacity was irritating me.

"Don't dare kiss you?" I repeated, switching my rod about in my increasing exasperation. "You'd better not repeat that, Thusis!"

Her flushed features quivered, then suddenly her eyes were full of little devils all mocking me.

"I do repeat it," she said. "You dare not!"

At the same instant my hook caught in a branch; I gave it a furious jerk; crack!—my rod broke at the second joint. And the clear laughter of Thusis rang out uncontrolled.

"Alas," said she, "this nice young man is violently offended at something or other."

An unfeigned damn escaped me.

"Mea culpa!" she exclaimed, breathless with laughter. "Mea maxima culpa! This exceedingly nice young man is dreadfully offended."

Mad all through, I picked up the wreck of my rod and stood silent, mechanically fitting together the splintered ends of the second joint. Presently I was aware that she had come up behind me.

"I'm a beast," she said in a small, weak voice.

I said nothing.

"Are you very angry, Don Michael?"—sorrowful but subtly persuasive.

"I've ruined this rod," said I.

"You may take mine," humbly sweet.

But I feared her gifts and her contrition.

A light breath—a ghost of a sigh escaped her.

"I'm such a beast," she said.... "But I've never before taken the trouble to be beastly to a man—if that flatters you at all, Don Michael."

"It does not," said I, coolly.

"It should," she retorted.

"Do you know what I think?" said I, turning, after the manner of other worms.

"What?"

"I think you overestimate your own importance. And that you'd be far more attractive if you were not too bally busy thinking about yourself every minute."

"If that is your opinion," she said, "we had better go home at once."

We went, in solemn silence.

VIII

THE KNEES OF THE GODS

The afternoon was growing very warm. Smith had stretched himself out on his bed to read a novel and combat flies. Occasionally he called out to me demanding to know how soon we were going to have tea by the fountain.

Which incessantly reiterated question put me out of humor—for I was writing another poem—and presently I got up, cursed him out, and slammed the door.

Recently something—whatever it was—had driven me pell-mell toward Parnassus.

As a matter of record, until I had purchased that photograph of The Laughing Girl, I had never before written a poem or attempted to write one, or even considered such an enterprise.

Nor had I most remotely suspected myself capable of producing poetry. Neither had I, hitherto, desired to so express my thoughts and private emotions. Of what serious people call the "Urge" I had, hitherto, been ignorant.

But since the photograph of The Laughing Girl had come into my possession, hidden springs totally unsuspected had begun to gush and bubble somewhere deep within me. And, to my pleased astonishment, I suddenly found myself not only endowed with the desire but also with the ability to rhyme.

And now on this warm, quiet, flyful afternoon, and still considerably upset over my morning on the trout stream with Thusis, I found myself at my table, abandoning myself to an orgy of self-expression in verse.

Having slammed the door I now returned to my poem; and first I carefully re-read as much of it as I had accomplished:

To THUSIS

I

Slender girl with eyes of gray—

Charming mystery called Thusis—

Teach me all your lore, I pray!—

How your loveliness seduces—

How each dimple has its uses

Leading men like me astray!

II

You display in gay array

Deadly charms, without excuses;

Are they fashioned to betray

Hearts unwary, naughty Thusis?

Are your russet hairs but nooses

To ensnare some soul distrait?

III

Love's a tyrant, sages say;

What he chains he never looses,

Making slaves of grave and gay,

Dashing blades and gray recluses,

Snaring with a thousand ruses

One and all, alackaday!

ENVOI

Cupid's sway the very deuce is!

His caprices and abuses

All endure and all obey.

Laugh away my pretty Thusis

He'll get you some summer day!

I re-read the Envoi with satisfaction born of the pride of prophecy. Also, no doubt, some slight personal bitterness gave an agreeable tang to the couplets.

"Clever,—very clever," said I, dotting a few i's and crossing several t's. And, feeling better, I laid away the poem and began to walk up and down the room exhilarated by my own genius.

"When a man," said I, "can turn out such verses"—I snapped my fingers—"just like that!—he is in little danger of any sentimental subjugation."

As I turned, my glance chanced to fall on The Laughing Girl, and, for the first time, I thought I noticed a faint and delicate malice in her laughing eyes.

"Good heavens," said I to myself, "how vividly she resembles Thusis!"

Oddly enough as I continued to walk to and fro in my room I began to feel a trifle less gay, less confident regarding my prophetic poem depicting the sentimental fate of Thusis.

"She's really very lovely," thought I, "and three-quarters devil. She'll do mischief to man, yet. Probably she's already done a good deal to some poor young man.... Poor simpleton! ... Unhappy simp!"

I walked over and looked fixedly at The Laughing Girl.

"Poor simp," I murmured mechanically, not meaning anybody in particular. But as I said it I lifted my absent and troubled eyes, and beheld my own reflection in the mirror. It shocked me. Never had I believed myself capable of a simper. And by heaven I wore one now—a moon-eyed sentimental simper upon my virgin features.

"Confound it!" said I furiously, "why should I look like that? What's the matter with my face?"

Very deep somewhere within me, in a still and serene obscurity so far unagitated and un-plumbed, something stirred.

"I—I'm not in d-danger of f-falling in love," said I in a scared voice. "Am I?"

Something was the matter with my heart. It had become irregular and seemed frightened.

"If for one moment I supposed," said I, "that I were actually in the slightest danger of—of——"

I looked at the Laughing Girl; looked away. And went to a chair and sat down.

After a long interval I gave tongue to my inmost convictions. "It isn't done," said I. "Fancy! Ha-ha!"

But my laughter was a failure.

I looked up at the Admiral to steady myself. I had never before considered his features sardonic. He seemed to grin.

"W-what the devil's the matter with everything to-day!" I exclaimed, getting up and beginning to pace the room.

But there was no use blustering. I suspected what the matter was. I was falling in love with Thusis.

"Good Lord!" said I in unfeigned distress, "an adventuress camouflaged as a servant! Has an O'Ryan come to this?"

Smith opened the door. He was in his shirt sleeves and had a pipe in one hand, a book in the other.

"Whatthehellsthematter?" he asked. "You're thumping about in here like an epileptic cat."

I told him I was exercising.

"Well, you'd better exercise your legs down the stairs," he remarked; "there's a wagonful of tourists at the front door."

"The deuce there is!"

"Look out of the window and then get a wiggle on."

Sure enough! From the window I beheld them. They already were disembarking.

"Where's Thusis!" I exclaimed. "This is the limit. It's—it's a confounded nuisance."

"Better go below, mine host," said Smith, resuming his recumbent attitude on his bed and opening his book. He puffed at his pipe, swatted a fly with a paper-knife, and looked at me.

"Mine host," he said, "you should greet your guests on the doorstep wearing a napkin over one arm."

I turned on my heel and went out, and met Thusis in the hallway.

"What the dickens is all this?" I demanded. "Have those tourists the impudence to come here and ask for accommodations in my house?"

She seemed surprised and also I thought a trifle excited.

"But, Monsieur, was it not understood?"

"Oh, yes, of course it was understood because the idiotic Swiss law must be obeyed," said I, gnawing my lip in vexation. "What do they want—these tourists? Tea?"

"I think," said Thusis, "they intend to stay."

"Over-night?"

"Longer, Monsieur."

"Hang it all!" I blurted out. "That spoils our perfectly delightful privacy."

Thusis observed me sideways. She wore the fine chemisette of some sheer stuff and the velvet bodice of the peasantry, both coquettish and cut low. Her straight short wool skirt and buckled slippers set off the fascinating costume of the Canton; but no peasant ever possessed such slender and thoroughbred loveliness.

I glanced down at her slim feet, at her hands so smooth and so prettily fashioned; I looked up into her gray eyes uneasily. And I thought to myself that I'd show the door to any guest who tried any nonsense with Thusis.

"Where are these tourists?" I asked sulkily.

"In the big lounging room."

As I started to descend the stairs Thusis touched me on the arm. A tiny and complex shock went quite through me at the contact.

"Don Michael?"

"Yes."

"Are you still vexed at me?"

"No."

"Because—I was rude to you. I did provoke you. I did lay myself open to light treatment from you. But—I do respect you, Don Michael."

"You are always laughing at me."

"I know. It's my way—if I like a person.... I plague them a little.... If I like them."

"But you not only plague me, you ridicule me!"

"You don't understand. You couldn't understand. I myself don't understand why I laugh at you and torment you.... Because I never before did that to a man.... To my sister—to my girl friends, yes. But never before to any man."

She stood near me, smiling, watching my expression.

"I like you, Don Michael," she said.

"And I you, Thusis."

"I know it. It won't do, either. I mean that we may laugh a little together, now and then. But it is safer not to think of each other as—as socially—equal."

I said magnanimously: "I am beginning to think of you in that way already."

"Are you really?" Her smile flashed out, mischievous, almost mocking.

"A servant?" she added. "Possibly even an adventuress? An agent, anyway, in the service of some government not yours? You consider admitting such a woman on terms of social equality? Oh, Don Michael! If you like me as much as that you must care a little more for me than mere liking."

"I do."

She began to laugh—a hushed, delicious sort of laughter, checked suddenly by my quick flush.

"If I take the trouble to be serious with you," said I, "as much is due me from you, I think."

It was, for me, utterly impossible to define the series of complex expressions which succeeded one another in her face.

She seemed inclined to laugh again but bit her lip and looked at me out of brilliant eyes. Mirth, surprise, gay disdain, a fleeting uncertainty, a slight blush,—then the familiar sweet mockery once more—these I read and followed as I watched her.

"Such a strange young man," I heard her murmur to herself.

"And such a strange girl, Thusis."

"I know. And you and I have no business to play together. And we can't unless we're very, very careful. We ought not to. You think so from your standpoint, and I know it from mine. And yet—if you will be very, very careful—I'll risk it—a little while longer.... Because I—I don't know why—I like to laugh at you, Don Michael.... And I laugh at those only whom I like."

"I think," said I, "that I'm rather near to falling in love with you, Thusis."

"Oh!" she cried with her breathless, bewildering smile, "I couldn't permit you to do that!"

"Permit me?"

"No. You mustn't. That would never do! No—no indeed! Never! Just find me gay and frivolous and rather pretty in my way—just attractive enough to remain good humored when I plague you."

"If I should fall in love with you I couldn't help it."

"But it would be such a mistake. You mustn't do it. I don't wish to think about such things. It wouldn't do for me. Or for you. I mean as far as I am concerned."

"You mean you could not respond, Thusis?"

"Oh, no, I couldn't." In her hurried voice there was a faint hint of alarm, I thought.

I was falling in love. I knew it.

"Unless you take me lightly—unless you are willing that we play together," she said, "I couldn't talk to you, Don Michael. I may not take you seriously; nor you, me. That is essential."

"I may not p-pay court to you, Thusis?"

"Oh, that? Yes—in the nice way you have been doing. At least I thought you had been doing it, haven't you?"

"Yes—not realizing it. Yes—that's what I have really been doing.... Am I not to make love to you, Thusis?"

"W-what kind of love?"

"Honest, of course."

"D-demonstrative—love?"

"Yes."

"Oh, no! No, not that sort. No, please." For I had taken her smooth little hand in mine, and she withdrew it swiftly.

"You know," she said, "your guests are waiting."

She laughed. Then she came up to me slowly:

"Don Michael, do you really like me?"

"Yes."

"Then—will you do something for me?"

"Yes."

"It is this. In the presence of these tourists remember always that I am your servant and a Swiss peasant. Never by word or glance permit them to believe otherwise. Do you promise?"

"Yes."

She smiled, laid both her hands frankly in mine.

"I'm going to tell you something," she said. "Your guests below are the ex-king Constantine of Greece, his wife, the ex-queen; Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria—or Tzar of all the Bulgars—as he loves to call himself;—and their several assorted shadows."

My eyes were widening at every word.

"Thusis," I said, "what nonsense are you talking?"

"Michael," she said, using my given name for the first time without some absurd prefix, "I am telling you the truth. Those are the people who, dressed like ordinary tourists, are now seated below drinking coffee and cognac and eating nice little cakes prepared by Josephine and served by my sister Clelia."

"Do you mean to say that the ex-king and queen of Greece, and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria are in Switzerland incognito?" I demanded incredulously.

"They are,—that is, Ferdinand is here incognito for the first time. You know, of course, that Constantine and his queen were living in Berne since the Allies kicked them out of Greece?"

"I have heard so."

"Well, then, here they are, incognito, without servants or any outward show, dressed like any tourists, arriving in an ordinary wagon. Yes, here they are, evidently desiring to escape observation, arm in arm with him of Bulgaria. I thought I'd tell you, Michael."

There was an odd little glint in her gray eyes; an odd smile on her lips.

"What the devil are these birds doing here?" I asked, astonished.

"These allies of Germany?"

"Yes," I said, disgusted; "what do you suppose these fancy gentlemen are doing here in a little obscure inn among the Alps while all the world which they have helped to set on fire is in flames around them?"

Her firm hands pressed mine, very slightly.

"Do you feel it so keenly, Michael?"

"Feel what?"

"That these kings below have helped set the world afire?"

"Certainly I do."

She stood looking at me, her hands still resting in mine.

"And now," she mused, "the Americans are in it. But you are not a Yankee.... Otherwise—"

"Otherwise what?"

"But you are a Chilean."

"I'm a human being, too. What do you want me to do, Thusis?"

"Permit me to assign them their rooms."

I said: "You are here to watch these kings. You knew they were coming. You are here to watch them in the interest of your government."

"Well, Michael?"

"Is it so?"

"Yes."

I looked at her in wonder, dismay, and deep concern.

This young girl—this fresh, sweet, laughing, slender little thing a spy? And yet I had vaguely supposed her to be some sort of political agent masquerading in my service for purposes occult.

But the sinister agent who lurks at the heels of suspects—the shadow that haunts marked men—the unseen, unheard presence that lingers by doors ajar, by unlighted corridors, in the shade of trees!—I had not thought of Thusis in such a way.

Something of this I think she read in my eyes fixed on her, for she flushed slightly and made as though to withdraw her hands.

But, still looking at her, I lifted her hands tightly imprisoned between my own, and touched them lightly with my lips.

"Oh," she said faintly, and I felt her sudden impulsive clasp.

"You are fine, Michael," she whispered. "I ask nothing in the way of help, only that you give me my chance in this affair."

"Take it," said I. "There are those imbecile kings! Raise the devil with them if you like. And if you need help——"

"Michael!"

"—You know where to look for it," I ended. "But for goodness' sake be careful, Thusis. Not that I care about myself. The chances are that I'll enlist anyway. But they'd intern you here in Switzerland if they catch you at anything militant. And that would worry me half to death."

"Would it?"

In her laughing voice there was the vaguest hint of a softness I had never heard there.

"Yes, it would." I drew her a little toward me, but she turned grave, immediately, and we stood so in silence while her gray eyes regarded me.

Then she gently disengaged herself.

"Be nice to me. Michael, even when I don't deserve it," she said; "even when"—she laughed almost maliciously—"even when I seem to court destruction."

"Nevertheless," said I, reddening, "I shall pay court to you."

"Please do."

"And make love to you, Thusis."

"That," she said, "is not even on the knees of the gods: it is impossible."

IX

REX, REGIS——

As I descended the stairs to greet my unbidden guests, through my noddle ran the flippant old time sing-song of earliest schooldays—"Rex, Regis, Regi, Regem, Rex, Rege"—an ironic declension of the theoretical in contrast to the actual which I could not very well decline.

Now, as I entered the long lounging room which Smith and I had used as our living-room, I very easily recognized God's anointed, thanks to Thusis. Otherwise it never would have occurred to me that what I now beheld was a bunch of kings in camouflage.

Constantine, the ex-King of Greece, sat near a window drinking a pint of impossible Greek wine and reading one of last month's New York newspapers. The ex-Queen of Greece stood with hands linked behind her well-made back, looking out at the mountains. At another little table the Tzar of all the Bulgars loomed up majestically. He was eating coffee-cakes and drinking coffee. I could hear him.

As I entered the room they all turned their heads to look at me. And I thought I had never gazed upon anything more subtly disturbing than the Hohenzollern visage of the ex-queen. Indeed she seemed to lack only the celebrated imperial mustaches to duplicate the sullen physiognomy of her brother, the Kaiser. That family countenance of a balky horse was unmistakable; so were the coarse features of Constantine, with his face of a typical non-commissioned officer. But of all faces I had ever gazed on the fat, cunning visage of the Bulgarian Bourbon, Ferdinand, was the most false. A long thin nose split its fatness; under a pointed beard a little cruel and greasy mouth hid close, while two stealthy eyes of a wild thing watched over this unpleasant and alarming combination.

Normally these people would not have noticed me; but now, in their rôles of tourists, they recollected themselves.

When I quietly introduced myself Constantine got up, and I went over and welcomed him, bowed to his wife, and, when Ferdinand, also, concluded to get up, I greeted him with the same impeccable formality.

"So you are the fortunate Chilean gentleman who has inherited this valuable property," said the ex-queen, her hard Prussian eyes fixed intently upon me.

"Yes, madam, I am that unfortunate Mr. O'Ryan," said I smilingly. "The duties of an inn-keeper are not yet entirely familiar to me but I trust that my servants can make you comfortable."

The queen remarked indifferently that if she were not comfortable enough she'd let me know,—and turned her back, paying me no further attention. Doubtless her scrutiny of me had satisfied her. Possibly the Chilean flag flying from the flag-pole in front of the house also reassured her. She gazed out at the Bec de l'Empereur, named from the august nose of her brother. Constantine's flickering glance rested on the rigid back of his spouse, shifted toward me uncertainly, but always reverted to that straight, stiff back as though in awe and unwilling fascination.

I went over to the counter and picked up the guest ledger: "May I trouble you to register in order that I may fulfill my obligations toward the Swiss police?" I said pleasantly. For none of them had so far offered me whatever noms-de-guerre had been decided upon.

At this the queen turned and said something to Constantine in a surly voice, and he got up with alacrity and swaggered over to the desk.

"M. Constantine Xenos, wine merchant, Zurich, and Madame Xenos," he wrote, his tongue in his cheek. His shifty eyes flickered toward King Ferdinand who had again become rather noisy over his coffee and cakes. Then, apparently remembering his instructions, he wrote:

"Monsieur Bugloss Itchenuff. Investments and business opportunities. Zurich."

He handed me the pen with a flourish: "There you are, Mr. O'Ryan," he said with a misleading heartiness in his barrack-room voice contradicted always by restless and furtive eyes and remarkable royal fingers which were never still—twitching, wandering, searching, unquiet fingers,—irresolute, uncertain, timid, prying fingers not to be depended upon in emergencies, never to be trusted, even in their own pockets.

"Do you expect to remain over night, Monsieur Xenos?" I inquired, glancing at the wet signatures on the ledger, and blotting them.

"Oh, yes," he said. "This inn looks like a damn fine place to spend a few weeks in—doesn't it, Sophy?" appealing to his wife in the loud, familiar, bluff tone characteristic of him, and which seemed to me neither genuine nor carelessly frank, but an assumed manner covering something less confident and good humored.

The Princess of Prussia, so abruptly addressed, turned slowly from her contemplation of the Bec de l'Empereur:

"We shall remain as long as it suits us," she said coolly. "And if our suites are ready——"

"Rooms," corrected the King in jocular protest.

"Suites," repeated his wife sharply.

Ferdinand, gobbling his slopping coffee, wiped his wet beard:

"If there are any suites in your chalet," he said to me, "I'll take one—that is, if it isn't too expensive. I can't afford anything very expensive, and I'll trouble you to remember that."

He got up, continuing to wipe his greasy mouth with the back of a fat, soft hand, and came toward us,—a massive man, and bulkily impressive except that his legs were too short for his heavy body, which discrepancy gave to his gait a curious duck-like waddle.

"I like plenty of privacy," he explained, "that's what I like. I want to see my rooms and I want to know in advance exactly how much they are going to cost me and what extras are not included in the——"

"Oh, for God's sake don't begin that hard luck history of yours," interjected Constantine in his best barrack-room manner. "Mr. O'Ryan is a gentleman and he's not going to rob you, Buggy!"

It was instantly evident to me that the Tzar of all the Bulgars did not like to be called Buggy,—the familiar, affectionate and diminutive, no doubt, for his first nom-de-guerre, which was Bugloss, and was, in the Bulgarian language, pronounced Bew-gloss, not Bugg-loss.

The Queen, paying no attention to her loud-mouthed husband or to King Ferdinand, crossed the room with a firm, quick step, and examined the ledger and the indifferent penmanship of her royal husband. Then, to me:

"Be good enough to show me to my suite," she said. "My husband will occupy separate but connecting apartments."

I banged on a large, brass bell. The door opened. Thusis appeared.

Her instant and abrupt appearance had an odd effect upon these three people. They all started perceptibly. The Tzar of all the Bulgars even jumped. Then he stared at her with the intentness of a wild pig in the rutting season. And King Constantine also regarded her with a stealthy sort of pleasure discreetly screened by a mask of bluff and hearty indifference:

"Now, my good girl," he said loudly, "kindly show us to our quarters and be quick about it. And maybe you'll find a pretty silver franc in your apron pocket if you step lively! Such things have happened—haven't they, Sophy?"

Thusis curtsied, then I saw her beautiful gray eyes lifted slowly and fix themselves upon the coldly staring orbs of the Hohenzollern princess.

"Madame will graciously condescend to follow," she murmured. "A thousand reverent excuses that I precede the gracious lady. But it is inevitable when the humble guide the well born."

The Queen's hard, suspicious face never stirred a muscle. She leisurely inspected Thusis from head to toe, from toe to head without approval and without mercy.

"Are you the chamber maid?" she demanded coldly.

"My house-keeper and waitress, Madame," I explained. "Her name is Thusis."

The Queen stared intently at Thusis, then very insolently at me:

"Your house-keeper? Really," she said,—"your house-keeper? Fancy! One might almost doubt that such a very young girl could possess sufficient domestic experience for such an important position."

I turned red; not Thusis, however; and either the vulgar innuendo had left her quite unconscious, or she coolly scorned the implication. And she merely smiled upon the Hohenzollern and awaited her Prussian pleasure.

"Come on, Sophy," said King Constantine, with a covert leer at Thusis's ankles. And they all started upstairs, King Ferdinand shuffling in the rear with the peculiarly ponderous waddle which characterizes the progress of an elephant's hind quarters.

King Constantine halted on the stairs to turn and call back to me in his noisy, unceremonious, jovial way:

"Wait a bit, O'Ryan! I forgot to say that we're expecting some friends of ours. So fix 'em up in good shape when they——"

"Go on, Tino!" interrupted the queen impatiently. "Don't you even know enough to keep on going when you start? And God knows," she added in her disagreeable voice, "it's hard enough to start you."

"All right, my dear," he exclaimed with his loud forced laugh. "I only wanted to rest Buggy's legs a bit."

And the anointed of the Lord resumed their shuffling progress upward at the heels of the swift, light feet of Thusis.

As for me I went out to the court where their luggage lay piled. The wagon which had brought them was gone, but Raoul stood there, his hat on one side, hands on hips, chewing a wheat-straw and gazing blandly at the pile of royal luggage.

"These," said I carelessly, "belong upstairs. Thusis will tell you where to carry them, Raoul."

"Bien, Monsieur!"

We both looked gravely at the luggage, then my glance rested on his pleasant, reckless face in which I seemed to notice a gaiety more marked than usual.

For one moment, as he caught my eye, I thought he was going to wink at me, but, even as his eyelid quivered, he seemed to recollect himself. And, with an absolutely indescribable expression, he seized upon the luggage, and, both arms full, strode toward the back stairs. And, far in the passageway, I heard him singing under his breath:

"Crack-brain-cripple-arm,

You have done a heap of harm——"

until Josephine Vannis came to the pantry door, her superb arms all over flour, and said in French: "Hush, Raoul, or I slay thee with my rolling-pin, thou imbecile, curly, hot-head!"

"My Josephine adored," he retorted, "thou slayest me hourly with thy Olympian beauty——"

"Be silent, addlepate, I implore thee! Is the very devil in thee, Raoul, to endanger everything with thy empty-headed audacity?"

"Ruler of hearts," he rejoined, "remain tranquil. Nous les aurons!"

I went upstairs, discovered Smith lying on his bed and reading, and then and there told him the whole story. He did not appear to be very much surprised over the royal identity of my guests.

"That sort of king," he remarked, "is likely to run about under foot. You'll find them a nuisance." And he resumed his novel and his pipe.

I went downstairs again. Raoul passed with more luggage.

I stood motionless listening to the retreating footsteps of Raoul through the stone passageway. And, as I lingered, intensely curious and beginning to feel uneasy, Clelia came out of the kitchen looking like some flushed, excited school-girl, her golden hair in two braids, and her blue eyes very brilliant in the bright sunshine.

X

CLELIA

When Clelia saw me a startled expression came into her face, instantly controlled and concealed by the lovely smile so characteristic of her and of Thusis.

"Something," said I, "smells very appetizing in there."

"Tea-cakes," she nodded. "Shall I bring you one from the oven?"

"Bring one for yourself, too, Clelia."

At that she blushed, then with a pretty, abashed smile, went into the pantry and immediately reappeared with two delicious tea-cakes.

"We mustn't be caught here doing this," she whispered, offering me one of the cakes.

"Who'd object? Raoul?"

"Pouf!" she laughed.

"Who then? Josephine? Thusis?"

"Pouf! Pouf!"

"Smith?"

She blushed a deep pink but shrugged her young shoulders.

"Pouf!" she said calmly.

"Well then, who is there to object to our taking tea together?"

"Your guests, Monsieur O'Ryan."

"My guests!" I mimicked her gaily: "Pouf! for my guests, Clelia. Do you think you could find two glasses of fresh milk for yourself and for me?"

"With cream on it?" she inquired naïvely.

"Certainly."

She went back to the pantry. I heard Josephine demurring, then they both laughed, and Clelia reappeared with the milk and two more fresh tea-cakes.

We seated ourselves on the stone milk-bench in the cool, shadowy passageway.

"The way you behave with your servants," she remarked, "seems almost scandalous, doesn't it?"

"Outrageous," said I. "What does Josephine think?"

"Oh, you haven't attempted any familiarities with her."

"No. I'd as soon try to pick up Juno and address that goddess as 'girlie.'"

We both laughed, sitting there side by side absorbing milk and tea-cakes.

"Now," said I, "the illusion would be complete if you wipe your mouth on your apron and I do a like office for myself on my sleeve."

She looked up at me and did it. So did I.

"What else?" she inquired.

"Now we'll kiss each other, Clelia, and then you'll go back to your pots and pans and I'll go out and hoe potatoes."

"Do you think you'd better kiss me?"

"Yes, I do," said I.

"I've never done it."

"What!" I laughed incredulously.

"Why no," she said, surprised.

"Is that true, Clelia?"

"Perfectly."

"And you're willing to begin on me?"

"Oh, pour ça—one must begin—if only to know how when necessary."

"You think you ought to know how it's done?" I inquired, controlling my gaiety with an effort.

"Well"—she hesitated with adorable indecision—"in an emergency, perhaps, it might be as well that I know how such things are accomplished."

"It's up to you, Clelia."

"Is it?" She thought deeply for a moment. Then: "It's going to be a shock to me, I suppose. But I've made up my mind that it's likely to happen to me some day. And I think I'd better be prepared.... Don't you?"

"Yes, I do." ...

"Besides, I never was afraid of you."

"Of course not. Nobody is!" said I, laughing.

"Oh, yes, they are."

"Who?"

"Well, for one, my sister, Thusis, is."

"Thusis! Afraid of me!" I exclaimed.

Clelia nodded: "She's afraid."

"Of me!" I repeated incredulously.

"Well, of herself, too."

"Why?"

"I couldn't tell you why. You know Thusis and I differ in some things. Thusis has her own ideas—about—the world in general. And I'm afraid her ideas are rather old fashioned, and that they are going to make her unhappy."

"Can't you tell me what her ideas are?" I asked.

"No. She may tell you if she chooses. But it isn't likely that she will. Anyway they are not my ideas. My opinion is that the way to be happy is to accept the world as it is, not as it was or should be."

"You are quite wonderful, Clelia."

"Oh, no, I'm not. I'm just a human girl who desires to be happy and who detests gloom of all sorts—gloomy ideals, gloomy pride, gloomy conventions that wrap their shrouds around the living and stifle them in a winding sheet of tradition."

I was astonished to hear this girl so fluently express herself. In her soft, fresh, brilliant beauty she seemed to have stepped but yesterday across the frontiers of adolescence.

"So, if you kiss me," she said, "I don't think the world is going to tumble to pieces. Do you?"

"I do not."

"However," she added, "if Thusis felt the way I do about the world, I wouldn't think of letting you kiss me."

I didn't understand, and I said so. But she laughed and refused to explain.

"Life is short and full of sorrow," she said. "And the world is full of war and we'll all get hurt, sooner or later, I think. What a pity! Because the world really is lovely. And when one is young, and just beginning to fall in love with life, one is naturally inclined to taste what few delights are offered between these storms of death—brief glimpses of sunshine, Monsieur, that gleam for a few moments between the thunderous clouds that darken all the world.... So, if you choose to kiss me——"

We sat quite motionless and in silence for a while. Then:

"How about Smith?" I asked tersely.

"Monsieur Smith?" she repeated, flushing. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know.... I wondered—wondered——"

"What?"

"How he'd feel about my kissing you. He might not like it, you know."

"You mean to tell him!" she exclaimed in dismay.

"No, of course not! But suppose he sauntered around the corner—during the process——"

Clelia laughed: "It might do him infinite good," she said, "to see that somebody is willing to kiss me——"

"What!"

"—Because he won't. And he knows, I think, that he could if he asked to."

"Good heavens!" I said, "I thought Smith had become sentimental over you, Clelia!"

"He is a very gloomy young man," said the girl with decision.

"But isn't he very evidently enamored of you?"

"He's too respectful."

I gasped.

"I can't goad him into human behavior," she went on with lively displeasure. "He must see that I am quite willing to be friendly and light-hearted,—that I am always ready to stop dusting and sweeping and making beds to converse with him. But all he does is to follow me about and remind me of the solemnity of life, and tell me that he is deeply concerned about my attitude toward the world. Fancy! It is not very gay, you see, my acquaintance with Monsieur Smith."

I was surprised. What she said presented Smith at a new angle. I had supposed him an idle philanderer.

"What worries him about you?" I demanded.

"He seems to think I'm an idiot. I told him I meant to take life gaily and happily when opportunity offered, because I, probably, had only a very short time to live. I told him that I found the world beautiful and that I had fallen ardently in love with life. I told him that I didn't want to die without learning a little something about men, and that my time was short, and I ought to neglect no opportunity."

"What on earth did he say?"

"He became angry."

"Didn't he say anything?"

She blushed: "Oh, yes. He said he wouldn't be used in such a manner. He said that he desired to be taken seriously or not at all. At which solemn statement I laughed, naturally enough. Then he became furious, demanding to be informed whether I had the soul of a soubrette or of a modest and properly brought up young girl.

"And I replied that to be modest did not necessitate deceit and hypocrisy; that I had told him the truth; that I loved life, adored happiness, was enamored of the world, knew nothing of men but wished to: imagined nothing more delightful than to be made love to, intended to take advantage of the first opportunity that offered."

"W-what did he say to that, Clelia?" I faltered, utterly bewildered.

"A lot of nonsense. He tried to make me believe that love is a tragic and solemn business—as though I were not fed up on the solemn and tragic!

"He said I was a fool and didn't know what I was talking about. He said, in substance, that the subject of love was one to be approached on tip-toe, with awe, formality, prayer, and fasting. He said that such a man as he could love only an ideal, not a human and happy thing in love with life and willing to prove it with the first young man that passes. He said that I alarmed and grieved him; that I am unmoral; that my impulses are purely pagan; that the formalism of civilization alone can sanction any impulse attraction between his sex and mine."

"What did you say?" I asked, feebly.

"I said, 'Pouf!' And I meant it."

Her color was high and her eyes very bright.

"I did like him. He was the first man I had ever had a decent chance to talk to alone,—I mean the first young man of education. And, knowing I hadn't much time, I was quite willing to play at being in love with him. I told him so."

"Maybe," said I, in a weak voice, "he wanted to do more than merely play at being in love."

"But my time is too short," she explained. "I haven't time to fall in love. Why doesn't he take what there is to take?"

"Your time is short—what do you mean, Clelia?"

"It is."

"Are you—ill?"

"No," she said impatiently, "I'm in perfect health."

"Then—what makes you suppose you're going to die soon?"

"I can't tell you. Of course I may not die very soon. But it's likely I shall.... And if I do I hope it will teach Mr. Smith a good lesson!"

"W-what lesson?"

"To take what offers and thank the gods!"

She looked up at me and laughed: "You'd better kiss me," she said: "you'll never have a chance with Thusis."

I blushed violently.

"Did you think I desired to k-kiss Thusis?"

"I think you are a little in love with Thusis."

"I am."

"How wonderful! And don't you desire to kiss her?"

I was silent.

"Because," said Clelia, laughing, "I think she'd like to have you do it. She'd slay me if she heard me. And she'd slay herself before she'd ever let you.... And yet—it is odd!—I'm willing to learn how it feels to be kissed, but I am not in love; and Thusis likes you and won't admit it:—you've turned my sister's head and she's horribly afraid of you; and never, never will she let you kiss her. And there you are!"

After a long silence she looked up at me shyly:

"Shall we?" she asked naïvely.

"I could show you how it's done," said I.

And then, just at the moment when the deed was about to be accomplished, a shadow fell across the floor. I looked up. Thusis stood there.

Her beautiful face flamed as she met our eyes.

Clelia stood up with a light laugh. "My first lesson!" she exclaimed, "and already ended before I learned a word of it! Take your young man, sister! He's quite as disappointing as his solemn friend!"

And she went into the pantry taking with her our empty glasses.

"So that is the sort of man you are," said Thusis calmly.

The utter hopelessness of the situation turned me flippant.

"Yes," said I, "I am a very dangerous, unprincipled man. I'm thoroughly and hopelessly bad, Thusis. What do you think about me now?"

"What I have always thought about your class,—nothing!" she said in an even, smiling voice.

"Class!" I repeated, perplexed by the word, and the faint contempt in her voice.

"Exactly. That is most accurately what I mean—your class in the social scale, Mr. O'Ryan. And you live—down to it."

"Will you explain," said I, amazed and angry, "what you mean to infer?"

"I don't infer. I am direct and implicit. You behave as might be expected. Quality demands certain things of itself. Of you, Mr. O'Ryan, nothing is demanded. And nothing involving quality is expected.... And I have been a great fool," she added quietly. And walked out the way she entered, leaving me perplexed and thoroughly enraged.

And I would not have it left in any such way; and sprang up and overtook Thusis as she entered the empty living-room.

"What I want to know," said I, "is what you mean by implying that any social inequality exists between you and me?"

"Between you and your servant?" she inquired mockingly. And tried to pass me.

"You didn't mean that! You meant something entirely different. Who are you, Thusis? And I don't care a sou who you are,—what you are! I am in love with you——"

"—And with my sister?"

"I'm in love with you! You know it!"

"I do not!"

"You do know it! And it disturbs you——"

My voice shook.

"It leaves me utterly indifferent," she said disdainfully; but her gray eyes were lifted slowly to mine and the color came into her beautiful face.

"What sort of man are you!" she demanded. "You see how young my sister is—how silly and inexperienced! And yet——"

"I'd as soon kiss a healthy kitten," said I. "She's attractive because she is your sister. Anyway Smith is in love with her——"

"I won't permit it!" cried Thusis. "I'll not tolerate such a thing!"

She clenched her hands; there was a glint of something in her eyes—but if it came from angry tears they dried before I was sure.

"I've brought this on myself," she said. "I laid myself open to it—invited familiarity and disrespect from you! The very devil must have been in me to so utterly forget myself! Now I've got to pay for it—pay for it in bitter humiliation—witness such a scene as I have just witnessed—and then stand here and hear you tell me that—that you are in love with me!—endure what you say——"

Suddenly it became clear to me what Clelia had meant when she said that Thusis was afraid of me.

"Thusis," said I, "you won't have to listen to any more of that from me. I shall not tell you again that I care for you. And anyway, in a little while it will no longer be true. Because I shall get over it."

She looked up.

"And I want you to know that I am not angry. And even if I were I want you to understand that you need not be afraid of my resentment."

"I am not!" she flashed out.

"You are! You are afraid that I might be the sort of creature to revenge wounded amour propre by proving faithless to the confidence you gave me. Don't worry," I added angrily, "because I'd cut my tongue out or face a firing squad before I'd utter one word to anybody concerning what you told me about your mission here."

There was a silence. Then Thusis' smile came back, a trifle tremulously:

"You silly boy!" she said. "Did you think I was afraid of that!"

"You say that, in my case, noblesse oblige means nothing to me."

She blushed scarlet: "I was angry—hurt. I did not mean that."

"You meant it."

"I did not! I tried to believe I meant it. I knew it wasn't true. I knew it would anger you; that is why I said it."

"Then why are you afraid of me?"

"I?"

"Yes, you, Thusis."

"I am not. I am afraid of nobody.... Except ... myself."

She looked up at me again, flushed, lovely, and her gray eyes seemed distressed.

"It's just myself, Don Michael," she said with a forced smile. "I seem changed, different,—and it alarms me—scares me—to find myself capable of behaving so—so imprudently—with you."

"Thusis!"

But she had passed me in a flash and I heard her light feet flying up the stairs. I followed. She was at the top of the staircase, but heard me and turned on the landing to look down.

"My behavior with you mortifies me!" she repeated in a hurried whisper. "Why do you follow me, Michael?"

"Do you have to ask me, Thusis?"

"You mustn't ever again pursue me," she repeated in a low, breathless voice.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because—possibly I couldn't run as fast as you can. Do you think I would endure it to be overtaken? Do you suppose I could tolerate being run down and caught? By you? Can't you comprehend that such a thing is unthinkable?"

Again that slightest hint of contempt in her voice, not entirely recognized yet vaguely divined.

I said slowly: "If I really understand, Thusis, then you need not worry. Because I shall never again take a single step in the world to follow you."

She seemed to consider this very deeply, standing on the landing and looking down at me out of her beautiful and serious eyes.

"Suppose," she said, "that you do follow me—not very fast—just saunter along—so that I need not run?"

She did not smile; neither did I.

"Would that be agreeable to you, Michael?"

"Would it be agreeable to you, Thusis?"

"Yes, it would.... Please don't come upstairs! Does it give you any pleasure to scare me and see me run?"

I had one foot on the stairs; and let it remain there.

"When I say saunter, I mean it, Michael. Just stroll around—in my vicinity—describing a few leisurely circles—so that I'll not notice your approach. Couldn't you do that—and keep within sight?"

"I'll try."

Suddenly her eyes grew brilliant and she smothered a laugh with her hands. Then, as both palms clung flat to her laughing lips she deliberately kissed them and, with a pretty gesture, threw the reckless salute at me.

"Your humble servant, Don Michael!" she whispered, "your housekeeper salutes you—and runs!"

Which she did, vanishing like a flash of sunlight in the dusky corridor.

I dropped one hand on the newel-post quite unbalanced by a complexity of emotions which no experience in life had so far taught me to analyze and catalogue.

"It's probably love," said I to myself, calmly enough. "And what the devil am I to do about it?"

There was no answer. Reason, instinct, emotion, appeared to be paralyzed.

So I climbed the stairs in a blind, mechanical sort of way, and went into Smith's room.

"Were you ever in love?" I asked wearily.

He laid aside his novel, unhooked the pipe from his mouth, and considered me very gravely.

"Yes," he said, "I've been in love."

"What did you do about it?"

"The wrong thing, I fancy."

"What was that, Smith?"

"I took the matter too seriously."

"Shouldn't one?"

"Never!"

I nodded, blankly.

"To be too seriously in love, and to show it," said Smith, "is disastrous to a man. It won't do, Michael. Unless our sex takes it gayly and good humoredly we're patronized. Take it from me, the solemn side, the fasting and prayer, must originate in the other sex. It never does if we betray such symptoms. They always wait to see whether we'll break out. And when we do they treat us as though we were sick—kindly but condescendingly. You get me?"

"Vaguely."

"All right. But here's the other aspect: when we fall in love, and say so, and then take the object of our vows gayly, amiably, and with perfect good humor always—no matter how inwardly we doubt and fear and rage—then, Michael, the girl we worship becomes very, very serious—even ponderous at times—and if she's got any brain at all it gets busy and remains busy. And what preoccupies her mind are questions concerning whether or not you really do love her seriously enough; and, if not, whether she can make you do it, which state of intellect causes perpetual anxiety and chronic uncertainty. And only when these emotions perpetually preoccupy a girl, can she finally fall in love with you sufficiently to forget what an ass you really are."

"Smith," said I, "are you in love with Clelia?"

"Yes, damn it," he said serenely.

"Then why don't you practice your theory on her?"

"My theory," he replied, "is the result of my experience with Clelia. That is how I came to evolve it. I believe in it, too. But it's too late to try on Clelia. Because already she has my number, Michael, and she knows me for a solemn, single-minded, and serious ass, very, very deeply in love with her. She's on to me, Michael."

I remembered my episode with Clelia and considered it for a while in silence. It was apparent to me that the girl's affections were completely and healthily disengaged. Her desire for happiness, her almost pagan love of gayety, her sheer delight in the mere joy of living, were not unmoral. And if, in her pursuit of pleasure there seemed something feverish, reckless, that was explained by her odd idea that she had but a little while to live.

"No use to argue, explain, reason, or preach to that girl," said I. "The thing to do is to give her a jolt."

"A jolt?" he repeated. "There's nothing left for me to say or do that could disconcert that girl. She knows I'm in love with her; she knows that I have lived a morally decent life, that my high ideals concerning women have never been lowered, that, to me, love is a sacred——"

"You tried to kiss her sister."

"That," he said, reddening painfully, "was my only lapse from the rigid conservatism of a life-time. And doubtless I am now suffering from that moment of relaxation into folly——"

"Doubtless you are not!" I returned. "I am certain that Thusis never mentioned it to Clelia. And I'm sorry she didn't because it might have furnished the required jolt."

Smith became gloomily interested.

"A jolt," I repeated, "is what starts things. Clelia requires one. All you need is nerve to administer it."

"How?"

"Why not frivol with Josephine?"

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "A man can't get gay with a girl like that! You might as well try to two-step with the Statue of Liberty! You might as well play the Doxology on a jazz band! You might as well give a burnt-cork show on the Acropolis! You might as——"

"Calm your alarm," said I. "That girl, Josephine Vannis, is rather an overwhelming beauty, I admit. But it's just those big, handsome, impressive, monumentally magnificent girls who fall for some little squirt——"

"Who the devil do you mean!" he demanded, hotly.

"I don't mean you. But you are shorter than she is; you don't weigh as much. Get a move on you! Inject pep into yourself. Become witty, gay, degagé, inconsequential, brilliant, light-hearted, bristling with quips and epigrams——"

"Who? I?"

"Certainly. Pull yourself up short. Eliminate every moral instinct. Drink more Moselle than you ought to. Hook arms with that brace of kings down stairs and pull your hat over one eye! Then, after you've been the life of the dinner-party, drop into the kitchen and bestow a few repartees on Josephine. And if Clelia isn't shocked I'm a boche!"

"I can't do all those things," he said uneasily.

"You can try."

So I left him a prey to conflicting emotions, and entered my own room and sat down on the bed.

"I'm in love," said I to myself, "deeply, inextricably in love! And what on earth am I to do about it!"

XI

A PYJAMA PARTY

About midnight I was awakened from agreeable slumber by somebody knocking at my bedroom door. I leaned out of bed, switched on the electric light, got up and opened the door.

King Ferdinand stood there in night-shirt and bare feet holding a candle that shook like an aspen leaf in the darkness.

"Somebody's been trying to open my d-door," he stammered. "I want you to come in and help me l-look under the b-bed. Not that I'm n-nervous or af-f-fraid, b-b-but I d-d-don't want to be d-disturbed."

"You say you heard somebody trying your door?"

"Yes, I did. I never sleep well and when I sleep at all I sleep lightly. I heard it p-p-plainly, I tell you."

I smiled. "It's a windy night," said I. "Doors and windows rattle."

"Yes, but the wind can't turn the knob on your door!" he insisted, his eyes of a wild pig roving nervously about my room. "I don't like such things, and I want you to come and look under my bed."

"Very well," said I, "let us go and look under your bed, Monsieur Itchenuff."

The Tzar of all the Bulgars was not an agreeable spectacle in his night-shirt and enormous bare feet. His visage was pasty, his eyes had a frightened, stealthy restlessness like a wild thing's that hears and scents an enemy but has not yet perceived him.

So wabbly was the lighted candle in his large fat hand, that I was afraid he'd set fire to his night-shirt, and relieved him of it.

"We have our own dynamo here," said I. "Why didn't you turn on the electric light by your bed?"

"It wouldn't work," he replied. "Do you suppose somebody has c-c-cut the wire?"

"Who?"

"God knows! Everybody has enemies, I suppose. You wouldn't believe it, Monsieur, if you knew me well, but even I am affected by enemies."

"Impossible!" said I, looking at him askance as he waddled along bare-footed beside me.

"Nevertheless, I assure you," he complained in a voice unctuous with virtuous self-pity, "I, who have never harmed a fly, Monsieur, have secret enemies who would d-destroy me."

Again I glanced sideways at this Bulgarian assassin—the murderer of Stambouleff, and of God knows how many others.

We came to the door of his dark bedroom and I went in with the lighted candle. First I examined the electric fixture.

"Nobody's cut your wire," said I. "The globe's burnt out."

"Does that seem at all suspicious to you?" he asked in an agitated voice, coming up behind me.

I smiled. "That happens daily as you must know." I got down on my knees and peered under his bed. Of course there was nobody there. Nevertheless he got down on all fours and took the candle to examine every corner. Then, puffing, he reared up, shuffled to his flat, splay feet, and went about peeping into closets, behind curtains and sofas, moving from room to room in his suite with a stealthy flapping of his bare feet on the parquet.

Meanwhile I went around trying the several electric switches. It was odd that all the globes should have been burnt out at once. Evidently some fuse in the cellar had blown out.

There was another candle on his dresser. I lighted it. And, as it flickered into yellow flame, something on the floor of the dressing-room beyond caught the light and sparkled. And I went forward on tip-toe and picked it up.

The Tzar of all the Bulgars was busy searching the sitting-room. Now, satisfied that there was no intruder concealed about the apartment, he waddled massively back to where I stood.

"All the same," he said, "I heard the knob of my door squeak."

"There are no robbers in this region," said I with a shrug.

"Monsieur O'Ryan," he said solemnly, "you may not know it but I am a very important personage—person, I mean—that is," he explained hastily, "I am important in a business sense. And I have many envious business rivals who would not hesitate to follow me secretly from Berne and attempt to possess themselves of any—papers I might carry—in hopes of obtaining business secrets."

I said nothing. He stood on one leg, rubbing one shin with his large, fat toes, and his little mean eyes roaming everywhere.

"You should have brought a servant or two," I suggested.

"No, no, not this time," he said hurriedly. "No, this is just an—an informal little p-pleasure trip with friends—the Xenoses—quite—er—al fresco—sans façon, you see. No, I didn't want servants about." He shot a cunning glance at me and checked himself.

So I shrugged, showed him how to double-lock all his doors, bade him good night, and went back to my own room, trying the corridor lights on my way. None of them worked.

"There's no fuse blown out," thought I to myself, staring at my own bedroom light which burned brightly and which was controlled by the same switch.

Then, locking my door, I took out of my pocket the small bright object which I had picked up in Tzar Ferdinand's dressing-room.

It was a silver filigree button from the peasant costume of Thusis.

Of course she had probably lost it sometime during the day when airing the suite. Untidy little Thusis!

I dropped onto my bed still holding the silver button in my closed hand. Presently I touched it, discreetly, with my lips. And fell asleep after a while—to dream that the Bulgarian and the Hohenzollern had cut off my hands at the wrists and were nailing them to my front door, as happened, I believe, to Major Panitza.

About three o'clock I awoke in pitch darkness, all quivering from my dream, and heard the wind in the fir-trees and the slam of a heavy shutter.

For a while I lay there hoping the shutter would stop banging. But it did not. Then I tried to locate it by the sound. And after a while I decided that it must be some shutter on one of the windows overhead.

The servants' quarters were there. I didn't exactly like to go up and hunt about. But the racket was becoming unbearable; so I rose again, got into slippers, trousers and dressing gown, and went out along the corridor. It was pitch dark, but I decided not to go back and hunt up a candle because I could follow the strip of carpet and feel my way to the service stairs.

And I was doing this in a blind, cautious way, and was just turning the corridor corner with groping arms outstretched, when, with a soft and perfectly silent shock, somebody walked into them.

Such a thing is sufficient to paralyze anybody. My heart missed like a flivver out of gear, then that engine started racing, and my arms mechanically and convulsively closed around that unseen thing that had collided with me.

"W-who the devil is it!" I said shakily, as a shocked gasp escaped it and the thing almost collapsed in my terrified embrace.

Then, as I spoke, my half-stunned wits awoke; a faint fragrance grew on my senses; the yielding ghost in my arms came to warm life, and two hands clutched at my imprisoning arms.

"Michael!" she panted.

"Great heavens! Thusis!" I faltered.

Freed, she leaned against the corridor wall for a few moments in palpitating silence. I also needed that interval to recover.

"What on earth is the matter, Thusis?" I managed to whisper at last.

"N-nothing. There was a shutter blowing——"

"But it's on the floor above! It's on your floor, Thusis."

She was silent for a moment, then: "What are you doing—prowling about the house at this hour?" she demanded.

"In my case," said I, "it was the shutter."

"Very well. I'll go up and fix it, and you may go back to bed."

But I had begun to feel a little troubled, and I made no motion to depart.

"I'll fix it," she repeated. "Good night."

"Thusis?"

"What?" In her voice I distinguished the slightest tone of impatience, perhaps of defiance. "What is it?" she repeated.

"Tell me the truth. What are you really about in this corridor at three in the morning?"

"I've told you."

"No, you haven't, Thusis."

After a silence I could hear her laughing under her breath.

"Mind your own business, Michael," she whispered; "I'm not going to confide in you."

"I want to know what brought you here," said I.

"What if you do wish to know? I am not obliged to inform you, am I?"

I heard her retreating, and I followed to the service stairs. Here a dim light came through a high window faintly silvering the stairs; and I saw the phantom figure of Thusis standing where she had suddenly arrested her steps on the stair-case, half-seeing, half-divining, my pursuit.

"Is that you, Michael?"

"Yes."

"Why do you follow me?"

"I want to talk to you."

"What nonsense! At three in the morning? Also I am not in conventional attire."

"I'm not, either," said I, "but we'll waive ceremony."

"No, we won't!"

"Yes, we will——"

"No!"

"Why?"

"I've told you why. Do you suppose I wish Clelia or Josephine to find me sitting on the stairs with you under such circumstances?"

She seated herself on the stairs as she spoke and I came up and leaned on the newel-post.

"I'm a perfect fool," she said. But she looked like an angel there in the vague light of the windy sky, her splendid hair about her face and shoulders, and her little naked feet drawn close under the hem of her silvery chamber-robe which she was belting in with rapid fingers.

"Well?" she said, looking up at me.

"I found something which belongs to you," said I, quietly.

"What is it?"

"A silver filigree button."

"Oh. Where did you find it, Michael?"

"In the dressing-room of King Ferdinand."

There was a pause—a second's hesitation. "Well," she said, smiling, "you've a clean mind, Michael. Also you have a sense of humor. What do you infer from your very immoral discovery?"

"You might have lost the button this afternoon while airing his apartment."

"Thank you," she whispered laughingly.

"Or," said I, "you may not have dropped it then."

"What do you mean?" she said bluntly.

"Thusis," said I, "what do you mean by wearing a pistol under your chamber-robe?"

After a long silence she looked up at me.

"A guess?"

"No. I felt it when you ran into me in the dark."

She hesitated, then:

"If I should say that I am timid you wouldn't believe me. Would you, Michael?"

"No."

"Then—what do you wish me to tell you?"

"Tell me, for example, why no lights work in King Ferdinand's suite."

Again there was an interval during which I rather felt than saw her gray eyes fixed intently on my shadowy face. Then:

"Has a fuse blown out?"

"No, Thusis."

"Then no doubt the globes are burnt out."

"Do you think it likely that they all burnt out at the same time?"

"It is possible, isn't it?"

I did not reply.

She waited, then asked me in a mocking voice whether there was anything further that worried me.

"I was merely wondering," said I, "who it was that awoke King Ferdinand to-night by trying the knob on his bedroom door."

"Michael!"

"Well?"

"Do you mean to be insulting?"

I went over to her and coolly seated myself on the stair upon which her feet rested.

"Thusis," said I, "I'm just worried about you. That's all."

"Will you give me a single sensible reason, Michael, why you should be worried about me?"

"Yes. That fat Bulgarian keeps two big automatic guns under his pillow. And he's a physical poltroon. And you can never tell what a coward may do in a panic."

Her eyes were fastened on me all the while I was speaking but her expression remained inscrutable.