Front matter (continued 3)

As I ended, however, it changed subtly.

"And—that is what worries you," she said in an altered voice,—a voice so winningly sweet that I scarcely recognized it for the gay, engaging, bantering voice I knew so well.

Then Thusis rose, and I stood up on the step below her.

"You funny boy," she said, "you mustn't worry about me."

"Does it surprise you?"

She laughed under her breath.

"Nothing surprises me any more, Michael. I am past being astonished at anything—at my own behavior, at yours. You wouldn't understand me if I say that, ordinarily, this rather improper costume of mine wouldn't embarrass me."

"You mean," said I, "that the social difference between us leaves you indifferent to me as a man?"

She bit her lip, looked at me with a flushed, distressed little smile.

"Yes, I meant that."

I nodded: "The indifference of a bathing princess to the slaves who stand beside her litter."

"It was—that way with me—once," she said, wincing, but still smiling through the color that surged in her face. "You would wish me to be honest with you, wouldn't you, Michael?"

"Certainly. And tell me, Thusis, who are you who condescend to converse with a plain republican? And what democratic whim has possessed you to so unbend?"

"Michael!"

"Yes?"

"You are mocking me!"

"But at least," said I, "you are a princess in camouflage—I don't mean a Russian one——"

She turned scarlet with anger and I saw her teeth busy at her under lip again.

"Piffle," said I. "You take yourself too seriously, Thusis. Whatever else you are you're the young girl with whom I'm in love—deeply in love. And I'm going to tell you so, and love you with all my might, and worry over you, and pursue you with advice and devotion until you make yourself too impossible."

"And—then?" she demanded in a voice strangled with rage.

"Then," said I, "if you really prove to be too idiotic and impossible, I shall stroll on until I encounter the next."

"Next—what?" The fury in her voice scared me, but I pulled myself together.

"Next girl," said I flippantly. "You know, Thusis, there are others."

She stood like a statue for a moment. Then:

"This," she whispered, "is what I ought to have expected for lowering myself! ... I invited it—this affront——"

"Piffle," said I, "you know in your heart I'd sooner blow my bally brains out than affront you. Why say such things? Why pretend to yourself? You know well enough that I'm so head over heels in love with you that I don't know what I say——"

"I do!" she retorted in a white heat. "And I've got to listen to it—I'm obliged to listen to—to an insolent inferior——"

"I'm not your inferior."

"You are!"

"Why, you silly, unhappy little thing," said I, "what if you are some funny sort of princess—some pretty highness of the Balkans? Literature is full of them, and if you'd read a little fiction you'd learn that they all marry ordinary, untitled young men like me."

"Must I listen to such outrageous insults?" she demanded, standing up very straight and slender in her offended pride, and forgetting that her bare feet under her nightie became the more visible the straighter she drew herself—lovely, snowy little naked feet as slim and delicate as the pedal extremities of a perfectly moral and early Victorian Bacchante.

"Am I to stand here and endure this insolence from you?" she repeated, her gray eyes ablaze.

"Not at all," said I. "You can always go upstairs to bed, Thusis."

Angry tears glittered in her eyes, not quenching their dangerous brightness, however. But I was now as mad as she was.

"Do you suppose," said I, "that this world war, this overwhelming disaster that is razing hill and city to one horrible and bloody level—this cataclysm which is obliterating the very contours of the world God made—is not also going to level such flimsy structures as the social structure?—such artificial protuberances as elevation of rank? I tell you, Thusis, that mankind will emerge naked and equal from this blood-deluge. You and I, too, are going to come out of it—if we do come out—not what our ancestors thought they were, but what we actually are! Very possibly, in generations gone with buried years, some doddering potentate may have managed to beget some ancestor of yours.

"What of it? Who cares to-day?—outside of the Huns and their barbarian allies? Who cares what you call yourself, I say? Who in God's name will care to-morrow? Do you imagine that the peoples who, like Christ, have descended into hell, can come out of those flames without the tinsel of rank being burned off? Do you suppose anything can remain except pure metal?"

I had let myself loose; and I fairly took away her breath.

She put out one hand and rested it on the bannisters in a dazed sort of way, still looking at me with a kind of fixed fascination.

"Have you any answer to what I have said?" I added after the silence had been sufficiently impressive.

She said faintly: "How about the Admiral, Don Michael?" And, as I choked and turned crimson, the girl turned, dropped onto the stairs, and rocked there convulsively, stifling her helpless, hysterical laughter with both hands over her lips.

I waited, hot with exasperation. There was nothing else for me to do.

Thusis struggled fiercely with her uncontrollable mirth, evidently terrified lest the indiscretion of her laughter awake the sleepers in the house.

"Thusis——"

"Wait! If you speak I shall expire. Because you never will know how funny you are, Michael! Oh——"

I waited until she was able to control herself.

"Thusis," I began, stiffly——

"Oh, don't! Please don't! I'm too weak. I'll go to bed—really I will, Michael. And leave you to wrap yourself in your nightie and stalk back to the Admiral——"

"Damn it all!" I broke out. She rocked, helplessly, her face buried in her hands.

After a while she got up, supporting herself by one hand on the stair-rail. The other hand pressed her heart.

"Michael dear," she said, "you are perfectly right. We are what we are. Nothing alters that. We are born what we are; we die what we are. No cataclysm can change what we really are.... As for distinction of rank, don't you know, Michael, that social inequality always has existed and always will?"

"Not artificial social inequality. Minds alone will dominate. Personality only will count. Inheritance and tradition will play no part in the world's future after this war ends."

"You seem to be quite sure, Michael."

"Perfectly."

"But you are so young to be a prophet and a seer!"

"Good heavens, Thusis, is there nothing serious in you!" I exclaimed wrathfully.

"Not just at the moment," she retorted, controlling her laughter. "And I'd better go to bed or I'll be suggesting that we start that music-box down stairs and try a two-step."

I took a step toward her: "It amuses you to be funny," said I, "but before we take leave of each other suppose you hand me that pistol."

"Indeed I shall not!"

"If you don't hand it over," said I, "I shall be obliged to catch you and take it away from you." And I started toward her.

At that she flew up the stairs, turned on the landing and leaned down toward me with an adorable gesture.

"Go to the devil!" she whispered softly. And vanished in the dusk above.

XII

ROYALTY

The Queen demanded her breakfast in bed. Clelia came to the breakfast room to tell me so.

I had heard the furious ringing of her bell and I said to Smith that something of that sort was likely to happen.

"You tell her," said I to Clelia, "that no meals are served in rooms. What does she expect with only one waitress?"

Clelia went away and Smith and I resumed coffee, toast, and a poached egg apiece. Presently Clelia returned, her eyes and cheeks brilliant with suppressed emotion.

"Well," said I, "what's the matter now?"

"Madame Xenos is very, very angry, and she demands to see the landlord."

"Did she employ that word?"

"Yes, she did."

"You say she wants to see me?" I asked.

"She insists."

"But you tell me she's in bed, Clelia. How can I go up?"

Clelia shrugged her pretty shoulders! "Queens don't care. A landlord of an inn has no masculine meaning to a queen."

"Is that so!" I said. "Very well"—I finished my coffee at a gulp—"I'll go and see Madame Hohenzollern."

"You'd better be careful," said Clelia, smiling. "She really is a vixen."

I recollected the story of Constantine, and that it was commonly believed she had once stuck a knife into Tino when annoyed about something or other.

But I rose from the table determined to settle her status in my house once for all.

"And, Clelia," I said, "I've heard other bells tinkling. Those kings upstairs are no good, and I wouldn't put it past either of them to demand that you serve them breakfast in their rooms."

"They have demanded it."

Smith turned an angry red and made as though to rise, but sat down again.

For a moment I was too mad to speak. Finally I said: "Of course you ignored their bells."

"No, I answered them."

"You didn't go into their rooms!"

"No. I knocked politely. Monsieur Xenos flirted with me——"

"What!"

"In a whisper through the keyhole. So I went away to see what Monsieur Itchenuff desired." She laughed and, lifting the coffee-pot, filled Smith's cup. "Monsieur Itchenuff wanted me to bring him breakfast. He also said he always breakfasted in bed——"

"Keep away from that pair!" said Smith violently.

But Clelia's eyebrows went up and so did her nose, mutely signaling Smith to mind his own affairs.

"Clelia," said he, "I want to talk to you——"

"I'm here to wait on you, not to talk to you!" she retorted.

"Then at least you must listen——"

"Must? Must? Monsieur Smith, your bullying tone does not please me!"

Here was the beginning of a pretty row. But I had another on my own hands so I left them and went upstairs to interview the Queen.

"Come in!" she snapped when I knocked. Her voice chilled my courage and I sidled in batting my eyes ingratiatingly.

The Queen was in bed. Her hair was done up like a lady Hottentot's, all screwed into tight little kinks. Over her sharp, discontented features cold cream glistened like oleomargarine on a bun.

"I've ordered breakfast in bed," she said sharply. "Why am I kept waiting?"

I explained that there was only one waitress.

"But what of that?" she asked in astonishment. "The other guests can wait."

"Why should they wait?" I inquired, annoyed.

She shot an arrogant glance at me and started to say something but, evidently recollecting her incognito as Madame Xenos, merely choked and finally swallowed her wrath.

"Madame," said I soothingly, for I was really afraid of her, "I am extremely sorry to inconvenience you, but the rules of the chalet must be observed by everybody, otherwise confusion in the service is certain to result——"

"I am not interested in your domestic problems," she said, and turned over in bed.

"Madame," said I, "let me trouble you to remember that I am not an innkeeper whom you can bully. I am the grandson of an Admiral!"

At that the Queen sat up and stared at me like a maverick.

"That's true," she said. "I had forgotten that distinction. I am sorry if I spoke too severely. Nevertheless it's very annoying."

I said I regretted the necessity of making rules; she yawned and fiddled with her corkscrew kinks, but nodded acknowledgment to my perfectly correct bow. And so I left the Queen, yawning, stretching, and rubbing her neck and ears with the sleepy satisfaction of an awakened cat.

The bell of King Constantino was still ringing at intervals. So I continued along the corridor and knocked very lightly at his door. Listening, I heard a shuffle of unshod feet within, a rustle, then through the key-hole a persuasive voice thick with suppressed affection:

"Why so cruel, little one? Bring me my breakfast on a pretty tray—there's a good little girl. And maybe there'll be a big, shiny gold-piece for you if you're very amiable."

I hesitated, listening to his heavy, irregular breathing, then opened the door.

The King looked intensely foolish for a moment, then seized me by the shoulder, drew me into the room, and shut the door.

"We're a pack of sad dogs, we men!" he said jovially, smiting me familiarly on the shoulder again. "We're all up to our little tricks—every one of us, eh, O'Ryan? No—no! Don't pull a smug face with me—a good looking young fellow like you! No, no! it won't do, O'Ryan. We men ought to be frank with one another. And that's me—bluff, rough, frank to a fault!—just a soldier, O'Ryan——"

"I thought you were a wine-merchant, Monsieur Xenos."

"Oh, certainly. But I've been a soldier. I'm more at home in barracks than I am anywhere else." He chuckled, dug me in the ribs with his thumb:

"Be a good sport, O'Ryan. You don't want both of them, do you? My God, man, you're no Turk, I hope. Why can't that very young one—I mean the yellow haired one—bring me my breakfast and——"

Probably my features were not under perfect control for the King stopped short and took an instinctive step backward.

"Where do you think you are, Monsieur Xenos?" I asked, striving to keep my voice steady. "Did you think you are in a cabaret, or a mastroquet or a zenana?"

"Oh, come," he began, losing countenance, "you shouldn't take a bluff old soldier too precisely——"

"You listen to me! Mind your damned business while you're under my roof or I'll knock your silly head off!"

I looked him over deliberately, insultingly, from the tasseled toe of his Algerian bed-room slippers to his purple pyjamas clasped with a magnificent ruby at the throat.

"Behave yourself decently," said I slowly, "or I'll take you out to the barnyard and rub your nose in it."

And I went out, leaving Tino stupefied in the center of his bedroom.

The Tzar's bell was ringing again, but I made no ceremony in his case, merely jerking open his door and telling him curtly to come down to breakfast if he wanted any. Then I closed his door to cut off argument and continued on.

I met Thusis in apron and dust-cloth, sweeping the stairs.

She looked up almost shyly as I passed her with a polite bow.

"Good morning," she said. "Did you sleep well, Monsieur?"

"The wind kept me awake," said I drily.

"And me, also." She glanced out of the stair window, leaning on her broom. "It is raining very hard," she observed. "The mountains will not be safe to-day."

"How do you mean?" I inquired coolly, but willing to linger, heaven help me!

"Avalanches," she explained.

"I see."

We remained silent. Thusis inspected her broom-handle, tucked a curl up under her white head-cloth.

I said: "You and Clelia seem to exchange jobs rather frequently."

"It mitigates the monotony," she remarked, resting her rounded cheek against the broom-handle.

"Where did you leave that gun?" I demanded in a low voice.

"Do you remember my reply to you on the stairs last night, Don Michael?"

"You bade me go to the devil."

"That was rude of me, wasn't it? And so frightfully vulgar! Oh, dear me! I really don't know what I am coming to."

She smiled very gaily, however.

"Thusis," said I, "you wouldn't shoot up any of these kings and queens, would you?"

At that she laughed outright: "Not if they behave themselves!"

"Seriously——"

"I am quite serious, Don Michael."

"You're bent on searching their luggage," said I. "And Ferdinand has two big automatic pistols."

"You're such a funny boy," said Thusis with her adorable smile. "But now you must run away and let me do my dusting."

Her sleeves were rolled to her shoulders. I had never seen such perfect arms except in Greek sculpture. I said so, impulsively. And Thusis blushed.

"That is the sort of thing I had rather you did not say," she remarked.

"But if it's quite true, Thusis——"

"Does one blurt out anything merely because one believes it to be true? Besides, ill-made or agreeable, my arms do not concern you, Monsieur O'Ryan."

"Everything that you are concerns me very deeply, Thusis——"

"I will not have it so!"

"But you said I might pay my court to you——"

"But you don't pay court! You make love to me!"

"What is the essential difference?"

"To court a woman is to be polite, empressé, always ready to serve her, always quick with some stately compliment, some pretty conceit, some bon-mot to please her, some trifle of wit, of gossip." She cast a deliciously wicked look at me. "I have no doubt, Michael, that you could, without effort, measure up to the standard of a faultless courtier.... If you'd be content to do so."

That was too much for me. I stepped toward her and slipped my arm around her pliant waist. She laughed, resisted, flushed, then lost her color and clutched my hand at her waist with her own, striving to unloosen it.

"Don't do that, Michael," she said, breathing unevenly.

"I love you, Thusis——"

"I don't wish to listen——"

"I'm madly in love with you——"

"Michael!"

"What?"

"Are you trying to kiss me?"

That is what I was trying to do. She twisted herself free and stepped aside; and I saw the rapid pulse in her white throat and the irregular flutter of her bosom.

For a moment the old blaze flamed once more in her gray eyes and I expected a most terrifying wigging, but all she said was: "You are very rough with me," in a small and breathless voice; and, suddenly, to my astonishment, turned her back and laid her head on the handle of her broom.

"Thusis——"

"Please d-don't speak to me."

"I only——"

"I ask you to go."

So I went, leaving her standing there with her clasped hands on the broom supporting her bowed head.

Smith was sulkily smoking his pipe. Clelia, beautiful and indifferent, leaned against the sideboard, awaiting the advent of royalty in the breakfast-room.

I went on out. Raoul, standing under the dripping eaves, was just hoisting an umbrella, and I took advantage of it and went over to the bottling works.

"We're making quite a lot of money," said I, looking over the order book and ledger.

Raoul smiled and ran his well shaped fingers through his curly hair.

"It's good spring-water," he said, "and God permits you an innocent income not wrung out of the poor, not cheated out of the less fortunate, not gouged out of business rivals whose loss is your gain."

I also smiled: "It is quite true, Raoul, that I do harm to nobody by bottling and selling the water which God has seen fit to send out gushing from these deep rocks."

"You'd never harm anybody anyway!" he said coolly. "One knows a gentleman."

And he went about his work, singing the song he seemed always to prefer——

"Crack-brain-cripple-arm,

You have done a heap of harm——"

And I began to wonder how the Queen would like that song if he came carelessly caroling it in her vicinity.

However, it was not my business to direct the musical inclinations of my household. I took the umbrella and, stepping to the door, spread it.

"It's quite a storm," I remarked.

"There'll be avalanches," said Raoul. I thought he spoke uneasily and that there was a hint of apprehension in the glance he cast up at the Bec de l'Empereur.

"Of course," said I, "we are safe enough in this valley."

"Yes, but a bad slide might choke the pass."

"What would that do to us, Raoul?"

"Cut us off from the rest of the world," he said simply.

"For how long?"

"Days, weeks—longer perhaps. Who knows what might happen if a big snow broke loose from the Bec de l'Empereur?"

"Anyway," said I, "we have sufficient provisions."

"Plenty, Monsieur."

"Then it would mean only a rather dull and exasperating imprisonment."

He looked at me with an odd smile: "It might mean the salvation of the world—or its damnation," he said.

I was silent but curious. He smiled again and shrugged. "For me," he said, "I pray that no avalanche falls to block this valley within the week." He looked upward into the heavily falling rain, standing there bare-headed.

"I ask," he said in a low, serious voice, "that God should be graciously pleased to hold His hand for one week longer before He lets loose His eternal snows upon this valley."

When I returned to the breakfast-room royalty was feeding. All acknowledged my greeting with civility, even Tino who, however, also turned red and nervously pasted his roll with marmalade.

"For diversion," inquired the Queen, "what does one do here?"

I enumerated the out-door sports. Nobody cared to fish except with a net. Tino expressed himself vaguely as in favor of a chamois hunt when he felt up to it. The Queen wished to climb the Bec de l'Empereur, but when I told her there were no guides nearer than Berne and also that this rain made the mountains very dangerous, she decided to postpone the ascent.

As for the Tzar of all the Bulgars he paid strict attention to his plate and betrayed no inclination for anything more strenuous than the facial exercise of chewing.

While the Queen was there neither King ventured to annoy Clelia, but after her majesty had left the table they both evinced symptoms of pinching, furtive leers and smirks.

However, there was a stoniness about my expression which served to discourage them. Ferdinand scrubbed his beard in his finger-bowl with a wallowing sound, dried it noisily on his napkin, rose, bowed to me, and waddled back upstairs.

Tino seemed very uncomfortable to find himself alone with me. But I conversed with him as good humoredly as though I had never told him what I should do to him in the event of his misbehavior under my roof. And we got on well enough.

He had mean eyes, however, and a fussy, jerky, nervous manner, yet furtive for all that. An odd monarch with the most false face, except for Ferdinand's, that I had ever beheld, though at first encounter one might easily be deceived and take him for what he pretended to be—a bluff, noisy, unceremonious, and somewhat coarse soldier with his tête-de-militaire and his allure and vocabulary of the Caserne.

"We've some friends arriving to-day," he said. "Did my wife tell you?"

"Somebody mentioned it yesterday, I believe."

"Well, they'll be here to-day, so fix them up snugly, O'Ryan."

"The rain may prevent them from starting," I suggested.

"Rain or no rain they'll be here," he repeated, lighting a strong cigarette.

He went away presently upstairs. And I did not doubt they would all have their noses together in a few moments discussing whatever crisis had brought them to this lonely little valley without escort or servants and carefully camouflaged.

I went into the living-room where Smith sat reading.

"What the devil," said I, "has brought these Kings here, Smith? Can you guess?"

"I don't know. I might," he replied, looking over his book at me.

"Well, what is your guess?"

"Why, I suppose they're worried. Things are going very rottenly for the hun. British, French and Yank are kicking them about most brutally from Arras to the Vosges. That pasty-faced pervert, the Crown Prince, has had the very pants kicked off him. The U-boats are a fizzle. The Bolsheviki are running into cracks like vermin to escape fumigation. Austria is sick from Italy's kick delivered into the pit of her stomach. Enver Pasha, who was promised the Khediviate of Egypt when the boche started to carve up the world, is turning ugly and demanding why the banquet isn't ready."

He made a weary gesture toward the ceiling.

"Up there," he said, "sits the most cowardly, murderous, and despicable ruler in the world—Ferdinand of Bulgaria—scared stiff because he's beginning to believe he's bet on the wrong horse.

"With him sit a King and Queen recently kicked headlong out of Greece. They also are becoming intensely nervous about that promise made by the hun Kaiser—an oath thundered from Berlin that the boche sword should restore them to their thrones.

"You see, Michael, they're worried. They've sneaked away from Berne incognito to meet here and lay all their cards on the common table. They're here to consult, bargain, cheat if they can, but anyway they're here to come to some understanding and arrive at some agreement as to the best means to avert utter disaster. That's why they're here.

"They couldn't feel safe in spy-ridden Berne; they evidently dare not trust their own servants. It is plain to me that Switzerland, which is mostly pro-boche, engineered the affair, willingly or reluctantly, because the Kaiser's sister is involved and the Federal Government is horribly afraid of the boche.

"You see how it came about, don't you? This bunch of royal crooks desired a safe place for a get-together party. Long ago they had planned it. Then you appeared to take possession of your inheritance.

"What could be safer for them than this lonely valley and a neutral gentleman from Chili to make 'em comfortable?"

"And a Norse Viking," said I.

"Be careful," he said gravely.

"Of course. But they believe you are what you pretend to be, don't they?"

"Absolutely.... And how do you know I am not?" he inquired smilingly.

We exchanged gay but significant glances. He went on speaking:

"That's all there is to it," he said, "a bunch of dips trying it on each other and still held together by the 'cohesive power of plunder'—the Prussian hun, the Austrian hun, the unspeakable Turk, the bloody Bulgar, the besotted Bolshevik!—a fine mess, Michael!—and here, under your roof, are three who have long ago been mugged, and who are known to the police of civilization everywhere."

"They've got their nerve," said I angrily, "to come here and discuss their dirty schemes! I've a damned good mind to ask them for their rooms. I've got enough of them already, Smith. I'm hanged if I stand for this another day——"

His hand closed on my arm in a leisurely grip of steel, and I winced and looked up at him in surprise and protest.

"Don't—spoil—things," he said quietly. His level glance met mine with a metallic glint, and I saw in his features something terrible—a fleeting gleam like the far reflection of lightning across a thunder cloud.

"Smith!" I exclaimed.

"Don't raise your voice, old chap."

"N-no. But—can't you tell me just what you really are?"

"I'm really quite all right," he assured me, laughingly.

"I assumed that. But—are you here, also, to keep an eye on these kings?"

"Well, you know one can't help noticing them——"

"Damn! Answer me."

"I admit," he said, "that they interest me."

So that was what brought Smith here, too! He must have known they were coming. He must have deliberately scraped acquaintance with me for this purpose.

"I thought," said I bitterly, "that you really liked me, Smith."

"I do, confound you!" he said. "If I didn't both like and trust you, do you think I'd have been so careless in concealing my identity?"

Both Thusis and Clelia had said the same thing to me.

"Smith?"

"What?"

"Did you know Thusis and Clelia before you met them here?"

"No."

"Do you know why they're here?"

"I can guess."

"Do you know who they really are?"

"No," he said honestly, "I don't. And I can not seem to find out. All I know is that their purpose in coming here does conflict with mine——"

The pretty fanfare of a postilion's horn cut him short.

"There," said I, "comes the rest of the precious bunch!"

"'Hail, hail,'" said he gravely, "'the gang's all here!'"

And we got up and went to the window to inspect the arriving diligence.

XIII

IN THE RAIN

That afternoon I fled the house. This new invasion of my privacy had quite upset me. Bulgarian and Greek royalty had been difficult enough to endure, but this new wagon-load of huns and near-huns proved too much for me.

If there were any privacy at all to be had it seemed that I must seek it in the woods. And thither I fled under an umbrella, a book under one arm, a fishing rod under the other, and my pockets full of smoking material.

For I preferred to sit on the wet moss in the rain, and read and smoke and fish under my ancient green gamp—even if the seat of my trousers did become soaking wet—rather than listen to the gobbling gabble of those Teutons and witness their bad manners and their unpleasant personal habits.

So, as I say, as soon as the new arrivals had registered and had been assigned to rooms I made up my mind to inhabit the woods during their occupation of my property, and invited Smith to share my indignant seclusion.

He declined, probably because, whoever he really was and whatever might be his job, the one and the other very evidently had to do with this bunch of assorted boches.

He said very politely that he didn't enjoy privacy when it was sopping wet. He smiled when he said it. We were standing at the desk in the big living-room: the huns, both royalty and new arrivals, had gone to their rooms, and Smith was carelessly examining the register where my guests' signatures had been inscribed in the pale and watery ink of the country.

"A pretty kettle of fish," I commented, looking over his shoulder. "But this new consignment of boches doesn't seem to be camouflaged. These are their real names, I fancy."

"I happen to know that they are," said Smith.

He began to read the names aloud just as they were written; and I noticed the lazy amusement in his pleasant, even voice as he commented upon each signature:

"'General Count von Dungheim'! Oh, yes; he belonged to Tino's suite when he was kicked out of Athens. They call him 'Droly.' He did some dirty work there—instigated the murder of the allied detachments. He's a big, thin Prussian with a capacity for gluttony equal only to the Bulgarian King's. He enjoys only one eye.

"'Baron von Bummelzug'! Oh, certainly. He's a Bavarian civilian. He engineered the treacherous surrender of that Greek army corps. He also was in Tino's suite, and still is.

"'Admiral Lauterlaus'! Tino's ex-naval aide. Tried dirty work on the Allied fleet off Samos. A Prussian,—mostly belly and head.

"'Princess Pudelstoff'! She was that enormously fat woman, Michael, who kissed King Ferdinand on both cheeks and left two wet spots. She's one of those German-Russians from Courland attached to the Bulgarian court, and related to Ferdinand in some degree or other,—irregularly.

"'Countess Manntrapp'! The pretty girl. You remember her honeyed, cooing voice when you were presented to her?—and her ecstatic baby stare, as though acquaintance with a Chilean gentleman had been the secret ambition of her life, and the realization overwhelmed her? Well, old top, there you have Lila Shezawitch, Countess Manntrapp—the widow of that brainless old reprobate, the cavalryman, who disappeared in some Russian swamp-hole when Hindenburg made his mark among the lakes.

"'Adolf Gizzler'! Look out for that rat, Michael. He's a bum school-teacher, Bummelzug's secretary.

"'Leo Puppsky'! What do you know about that Bolshevik being here in Switzerland? And

"'Isidore Wildkatz,' too! Here they are with the huns, this pair of Judases! Oh, you're quite right, Michael. It's a pretty kettle of fish. I don't blame you for taking to the woods, rain or no rain."

"You won't come, too?" I asked. He smiled, and I understood.

He was such a decent sort. I had become very fond of him.

"All right," said I; "don't get yourself into trouble. That's certainly a sinister bunch of boches as well as an unpleasant one."

"Good old Michael," he said, patting my shoulder.

So I took to the woods with rod and book, and a camp-stool I picked up on the veranda.

Heavens, how it rained! But I stopped at the barn-yard, found a manure-fork, and disinterred a tin canful of angle-worms. Then I marched on in the teeth of the storm, umbrella over my head, and entered that pretty woodland path which Thusis and I had once trodden together on our food-conservation quest.

The memory inclined me to sentimental reverie, and, with my dripping gamp over my head, I slopped along in a sort of trance, my brain a maze of vague enchantment as images of Thusis or of my photograph of The Laughing Girl alternately occupied my thoughts.

For, when alone, these two lovely phantoms always became inextricably mixed. I could not seem to differentiate between them in memory. And which was the loveliest I could not decide because the resemblance was too confusing.

And so, in a sort of delicious daze, I arrived at the foot-bridge.

Here I spread my camp-stool by the green pool's edge. It was a torrent, now, but still as brilliant and clear as a beryl, and that it lacked its natural and emerald clarity did not deter me from baiting my hook with several expostulating worms, and hurling it forth into the foaming basin.

To hold a fishing rod in one fixed position bores me, and always did. So I laid the rod on the bank, placed a flat stone on the butt, and, sheltered under my umbrella, lighted a pipe and opened my book.

But the book soon bored me, too. It was a novel by one of the myriads of half-educated American "authors" who resemble a countryman I once knew who called himself a "natural bone-setter" and enjoyed a large and furtive practice among neighboring clodhoppers to the indignation of all the local physicians.

There are thousands of "authors" in the United States. But there are very few writers.

And this novel was by an author, and my attention wandered.

Through an opening in the forest on a clear day one might look out upon a world of mountains eastward. I realized there could be no view through the thickly falling rain, but I turned around. And, to my surprise, I beheld a cloaked figure poised upon the chasm's distant edge, peering out into the storm through a pair of field-glasses.

I knew that figure in spite of the cloak. Nor could the thickly slanting rain quench the glorious color of that burnished hair.

"Thusis!" I shouted.

Slowly the figure turned, glasses still poised; and I saw her looking in my direction.

"I'm fishing!" I called out joyously. "Come under my umbrella!"

She cast a glance behind her toward the blank void where, on clear days, the bulk of the Bec de l'Empereur towered aloft in its mantle of dazzling snow. Then she slowly walked toward me through the rain.

When she came near to where I sat, she began to laugh; and I never saw such an exquisite sight as Thusis, bare-headed in the rain, laughing.

"What on earth are you up to, Michael?" she said.

"Fishing. That herd of huns will eat us out of house and garden if we don't catch something. Sit beside me under the umbrella, Thusis. There's room if we're careful and don't let the camp-stool collapse."

She gave me an inscrutable glance, stood motionless for a few moments, then slowly came over.

"Careful now," I cautioned her, rising. "We must both seat ourselves at the same instant or this camp-stool will close up like a jack-knife. Are you ready?"

She laughed and inclined her pretty head.

"Then—one! two! three! Sit!"

We managed to accomplish it without an accident.

"We're too close together," she protested.

"Don't stir," said I. "Do you feel how it wabbles?"

She tested the camp-stool cautiously, and nodded.

"What an absurd situation," she remarked, glancing up at the gamp which I held over us.

"I think it's very jolly." She didn't look at me; we were too close—so close that we might possibly have rubbed noses if either turned. But in her side-long glance I noted both amusement and irony.

"Have you caught anything, Don Michael?"

"Not a bally thing."

"What are you reading?"

"A book of sorts—a novel by an 'author' who lacks education, cultivation, experience, vocabulary, and a working knowledge of English grammar. In other words, Thusis, a typical American 'author,'—one of the Bolsheviki of literature whose unlettered Bolshevik readers are recruited from the same audience that understands and roars with laughter at the German and Jewish jokes which compose the librettos of our New York musical comedies."

Thusis turned up her pretty nose and shrugged—or tried to,—but nearly upset me, and desisted.

"It's silly to sit here like two hens on a roost," she said.

"It's cozy," said I with a blissful smile that perhaps approached the idiotic.

"Cozy or not," she insisted, "we resemble a pair of absurd birds."

"Then," said I, "one of us ought to twitter and begin to sing."

We both laughed. "The last time we were here together," I reminded her, "you were singing all the while."

"Was I?"

"Yes, and I liked it—although your detachment was not flattering to me."

"Poor Michael. Did you feel abused?"

"It's no novel feeling," said I.

"You ungrateful young man! Do you mean to insinuate that I abuse you? I—who go fishing with you, stop my house-work to gossip with you, sit on the stairs with you at three in the morning—and in my nightie, too——"

"What an incident for a best-seller!" said I. "Fancy the fury of the female critic! Imagine the rage of the 'good woman'!"

"You are satirical, Don Michael."

"Doesn't satire amuse you?"

"I adore it."

"Nothing," said I, "so angers ignorance as satire, because it is not understood, and ignorance becomes suspicious when it does not understand anything. Ignorance mistakes dullness for depth. That is why dull books are so widely read.

"There is, in America, Thusis, a vast desert inhabited by 'authors' who produce illiterature.

"Similar deserts, though less in area, exist in other sections of America. By its ear-marks, however, I guess that this book was 'authorized' somewhere west of Chicago. Don't read it. Only 'a good woman' could enjoy it."

Thusis laughed. "Don't you admire good women and critics?"

"The American critic," said I, "is usually female but not necessarily feminine in sex. It is what is reverently known as 'a good woman'—and like a truffle-hound its nose for immorality is so keen that it can discover a bad smell where there isn't any."

Thusis threw back her head and yielded to laughter unrestrained.

"So you think there was nothing immoral in sitting on the stairs with you in my nightie?"

"Was there?"

"Of course not. Clean minds are independent of clothes. As for clothing, I often wish these were Greek times and I were rid of all my duds except sandals and a scarf."

"It's all very well for you to wish that, Thusis, but consider the spectacle of the Princess Pudelstoff, for example, in Olympian attire——"

And Thusis went off into a gale of laughter, endangering our mutual stability on the camp-stool. Which scared her,—an unpremeditated bath in the pool having been narrowly averted—and she said again that it was silly of us to sit there like a pair of imbecile dicky-birds.

"Then tune up, Thusis. You seem to know a lot of songs. I liked that odd, weird, sweet little song you kept singing about Naxos and Tenedos."

"I didn't suppose you noticed it, Michael."

"I notice everything concerning you."

Looking at her sideways I saw the charming color deepen in her cheeks.

"Is that paying court to you or making love to you?" I added.

"I don't know. Somehow, when you pay court to me, you make it sound like—the other thing."

"But I am in love——"

"Wait," she said hastily. "I'll sing another funny song—the same sort of song you found so amusing—about Naxos and Tenedos. It is called 'Invocations.'"

As a little bird looks up to heaven after every sip of water, so Thusis looked up after inspiration had sufficiently saturated her. She lifted her pretty voice as clearly and sweetly as a linnet sings in the falling rain:

"Wine poured out to Aphrodite,

On thy sacred sands,

In libations to the mighty

Blue-eyed goddess Aphrodite

Perfumes all thy strands,

Scents the meadows and thy woodlands,

Tenedos, my Tenedos!

Every maiden understands

Why each flowering orchard close

Swims with fragrance of the rose.

Votive wine that long ago

Set thy sacred soil aglow

Sweetens still each Grecian nose

In Tenedos, my Tenedos!

II

God-like Bacchus with his flighty

Band of laughing jades,

Drank and sang and every night he

Got so classically tight he

Sought thy sylvan glades.

Snoring where he gaily reveled,

Tenedos, my Tenedos!

Mid his pretty nymphs disheveled

Sleeping off the over-dose,

Waking late to vinous woes!

Votive wine that long ago

Set thy sacred groves aglow,

Still exhilarates each nose

In Tenedos, my Tenedos!"

"Oh, the cunning little song!" I exclaimed enchanted. "But what is Tenedos, anyway? It's an island, isn't it?"

"It is," said Thusis solemnly.

"Certainly. I remember. And so is Naxos—Greek islands in the Ægean."

"I shall mark you perfect," said Thusis gravely. And she wrote "perfect" in the air with one slim forefinger.

"Why," said I curiously, "do you sing songs about Naxos and Tenedos?"

"Perhaps because I have lived in Naxos and Tenedos."

"I see."

"No, you don't," said Thusis, smiling.

We sat for a while in silence watching the foaming current swerving my line. But no fish moved it.

"They must be pretty—those Greek islands," said I vaguely.

"Do you know their history?"

"No."

"Would you like to hear it?"

"Whatever you say I like to hear," I replied, beginning to ooze sentiment as well as rain.

"You annoy me," said Thusis. "Listen sensibly, if you wish me to tell you about those islands."

Snubbed, I sat silent with an injured expression that afforded her lively satisfaction, judging from her vivacious voice and manner:

"You are to know, Michael," she began, "that Naxos is one of the Cyclades, and from the day of the old gods it has been famous for its wine.

"In the thirteenth century it was conquered by Venice. It was made into a duchy. So was Tenedos.

"But these two Venetian Duchies were conquered and annexed by the unspeakable Turk in the sixteenth century. Then Greece recovered Naxos."

She looked down pensively at her folded hands. Presently they became interlocked and I saw the fingers twisting nervously.

"There are," she said, "some people—descendants of the old Venetians in Naxos, who believe that the island ought to belong to Italy ... and that the duchy ought to be revived and reconstituted."

"Are you one of these people, Thusis?"

"Yes. I am descended from those Venetians. I was born in Naxos."

She remained absorbed in her own reflections for a few moments, then:

"Tenedos, also, ought to become a duchy again. The Turk rules it. He calls it Bogdsha-Adassi. But it was allied with Greece before Christ lived. It should be either Grecian or Italian.... And Clelia and I believe that it rightly belongs to Italy."

"How big an island is it?"

"About seven miles long."

We both laughed.

"Are seven miles worth fighting for?" I asked, amused.

"One's back-yard is worth fighting for, isn't it?" she asked calmly.

"Of course. But not for the purpose of establishing a duchy in it."

Thusis didn't seem to consider that remark very funny.

"I'll freely give anything I have," she said hotly, "but I'll fight like a wild-cat to resist the robbery of a single button!"

"I didn't steal that button," said I. "I brought it back to you—from Ferdie's dressing-room."

"I wish you wouldn't be so flippant, Michael!"

"Am I?"

"Very."

She really seemed vexed and I asked her pardon.

"But you oughtn't to mention theft to a thief," I added. "I'm trying to steal your heart, you know——"

"Michael, you are insufferable!" she exclaimed with a movement of impatience that almost sent us into the pool. In fact she clutched me and held fast while I struggled to recover our balance. And after I had reëstablished our equilibrium I was low enough, mean enough, to pretend we were still in danger, so heavenly sweet it was to me to feel her little hands close clinging.

Whether or not she discovered my perfidy I was not certain, for presently she released her grasp and sat very still and flushed beside me, her eyes fixed on the frivolous brook.

Which drove me uneasily toward conversation—the first refuge of the guilty.

"And so," said I, in a casual and pleasant voice, "you are really a descendant of those ancient Venetians who once occupied Naxos."

"I don't wish to continue the subject," she said.

Snubbed again I relapsed into mournful inertia. Which presently she inspected sideways. And after a while she laughed.

"You are so ridiculous," she said. "No girl, I fancy, can remain angry with you very long."

"Thusis?"

"What?"

"I want to court you. May I?"

"Yes—if you don't make it resemble the other thing."

"I'll be careful."

"Very well."

And, as I remained buried in reflection: "You may fire when ready, Michael."

"Have you ever lived in the United States?" I asked, astonished.

"I was educated there," she replied demurely.

"Oh, Lord!" said I, "that accounts for a lot of things! Why on earth I didn't suspect it I can't imagine——"

"Oh, I'm not typical; I'm international, Michael—cosmopolitan, inter-urban, anti-insular, so to speak——"

"You're inter-stellar, you beautiful bright star!——"

"Michael!"

"What?"

"Is that courtship? Or the other?" she inquired.

"Courtship. It's a perfectly proper flight of astronomical fancy. It's a scientific metaphor, Thusis dear. I'll tell you another:

"Some lovers woo the Pleiades

Who shyly flirt from midnight skies,

But all my vows and all my sighs

Are centered in the Cyclades

Where she I love first saw the light

—Thusis divine so slim and white—"

"Michael!"

"I love her noble mind serene,

I love her ruddy tresses bright,

I love her slender neck so white,

I love her heart so young and clean,

In fact I love her, if she please,

My goddess of the Cyclades—"

"Michael!!!"

"What?" said I, annoyed at being checked in my fine frenzy.

"Is—is that courtship?"

"Certainly! Did you never hear of a troubadour? I'm improvising and for God's sake don't interrupt me."

At that she relapsed into meek silence. But I had lost my momentum. It was all off; she had ruined that totally unexpected burst of inspired fluency which had astonished and intoxicated me, whatever it had done to her.

"Damnation," I said.

"Forgive me, Michael. I'm so truly repentant.... And it was very, very beautiful."

"It wasn't so bad," I admitted, mollified. "I had no idea I could do it, Thusis."

"It was—agreeable. I liked it. Will you forgive me? Because when I interrupted I punished myself most of all."

"You sweet little thing!——"

"I did. I was worse than Psyche," she went on, "who blew out the candle—too late—the torch of inspiration—Oh, dear, that metaphor is very sadly mixed, Michael, but you understand what I mean. Do you pardon me?"

To reassure her I touched her hands which lay clasped in her lap. She gave a slight start, but as my hand settled and rested there upon both of hers she seemed to become unconscious of the contact.

"I had no idea that you could improvise so cleverly," she said.

"Nor I," said I, frankly. "It's true, however, that I've had some little practice in writing verses—er—recently."

"Have you been writing verses, Michael?"

"Yes."

"About what?"

"About you."

She became interested in my fishing line, and watched it intently. But it was only the current moving it.

"Thusis dear——"

She said hastily: "Remember the difference between courtship and the other!"

"Won't you let me make love to you?"

"I can't, Michael!"

After a pause: "Would you let me if you could?"

"Yes," she said under her breath.

"Dear——"

"Please don't say that!"

"I want to ask you one thing."

"What?"

"You're not married, are you?"

"No."

"Then——"

"It's a more hopeless barrier than that!" she interrupted with a sudden catch in her breath. "I can't let you make love to me. I can't let you love me! I c-can't love you—let myself—do it——"

Her voice was drowned in a terrific roar. All the thunders of the skies seemed to unite in one tremendous outburst.

Deafened, almost stunned, we sat there partly stupefied by the mighty concussion which lengthened into bellowing thunder until the bank of the stream trembled under our feet, and the umbrella wiggled in my hand.

"Good Lord!" I whispered; but Thusis sprang up with a little cry of dismay.

"Don't be afraid, darling!" I cried, preparing to gather her to my breast. But she was excitedly adjusting her field-glasses and focussing them on the Bec de l'Empereur.

And then I perceived that the rain had ceased; that the sun was already blazing through the pass below.

"The devil!" cried Thusis, stamping her pretty foot. Then, in a fury of despair, she turned to me and stretched out one arm, pointing toward the valley pass.

And I saw that it had been utterly obliterated by the mighty avalanche, the earth-shaking thunder of which had petrified us.

Suddenly the gray eyes of Thusis filled with tears of fury and disappointment.

"Oh, Michael! Michael!" she faltered, "what shall we do now! We had them all in the trap! We were ready to spring it to-night! Oh, Michael! Michael! M-my heart is b-broken——"

She walked blindly into my arms—she didn't know what she was about, I suppose. I petted and soothed her; she hid her face on my breast.

"Darling," I said, "I can't bear to see you suffer. I suppose that you and Clelia and Josephine and Raoul had some scheme cooked up to kidnap that bunch of huns at the house and get them over the frontier into France. Didn't you, dear?"

"Y-yes. And just l-look what's happened! Look at this act of God! Why has God let it rain? Why has He let loose this avalanche at such a moment!—at such an agonizing moment when we had all the rats trapped! And our own agents on the frontier to let us through! ... Doesn't God realize that all civilization—all Christendom is tottering? Doesn't He know what hell threatens it? Why has He done this thing to us! Can He not see France bled white!—England reeling!—Italy agasp!—America only half ready!—Naxos prostrate under the Greek tyrant's usurping heel!—Tenedos thrown to the Turk! I—I have begun to lose my faith in God!" she cried violently; "the old gods were less cruel—less indifferent. And at least they displayed enough interest to take sides!"

I continued to pet and comfort and soothe her as I would a half hysterical child.

"God is on duty," I said. "Who are we to divine His strategy? Why take even General Foch. His own officers can't penetrate his purpose; much less can the huns. But he drives the spirits of evil before him; he hustles the hellish legions toward destruction in his own way. The maddened swine are stampeding, Thusis! God's ocean waits."

"Y-yes. I—shall pull myself together.... I'm ashamed."

"No, you're all right, Thusis. Take heart. And, if there's any comfort in knowing I'm with you, always, loyally, through life to death——"

I thought, against my breast, there was the slightest pressure in response, but concluded that Thusis had merely braced herself to get away and stand on her own legs. Which she now did, resolutely, but keeping her face averted.

We stood so, gazing down in silence at the snow-choked pass which now cut us off from the world entire.

"After all," said I, "it pens in the huns as well as it cages us. We may get them yet."

The girl straightened up and turned toward me. Her features were radiant, transfigured.

"Nous les aurons!" she cried, throwing her arm out toward the valley with the superb gesture of some young goddess launching thunderbolts.

XIV

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. SMITH

The distinguished company at the chalet had already gathered on the veranda apparently to contemplate the flaming sunset when, separating from Thusis in the woods behind the barn, I sauntered into view with rod and creel.

Instantly I became a target for Teutonic eyes of the several sorts peculiar to the hunnish race,—cold disapproving eyes, narrow bad-tempered eyes, squinting eyes, gimlet eyes, pale pig-eyes,—all intent on my approach.

"Hello!" cried King Constantine in his loud, bluff way, "have you had any luck, O'Ryan?"

The fat Princess Pudelstoff began to pant cheerfully in anticipation of finny food:

"I hope you've caught some trout," she said in a thick, good-natured voice which the rolls of fat on her neck rendered husky and indistinct. "I like to eat mine Meunière and Blaue-gesotten. I like 'em breaded and fried in butter. I like plenty of melted butter." She pried open the creel cover as I passed. "Where are the fish?" she asked with a gulp of disappointment.

"I'm sorry, Princess——"

"Droly!" she exclaimed in English, turning to General Count von Dungheim, "he ain't caught a fish! And me smackin' my lips like I was eatin' onto a fat filet! Oh my God!"

Astonished to hear such east-side accents spurting from the lips of the Princess Pudelstoff, I politely explained that the stream was in flood, and that trout wouldn't take hold in high water. In the midst of my apology Baron von Bummelzug uttered a disagreeable laugh and said something rude to Admiral Lauterlaus who stared at me insultingly as he replied: "Skill is not to be expected in a Yankee. Instead of a rod he should have used a net. That's the way our peasants fish for trout."

I turned red and looked hard at the Admiral. "There's a net in the barn," said I, "if you want to try your skill!" which infuriated that formidable sea-warrior whose ancestry was purely peasant. He glared at me angrily and his bushy eyebrows worked up and down like the features of a mechanical toy.

"I said our peasants fish with a net!" he began, a far, hollow roar audible in his voice like the sound of the sea in a big shell.

"I heard you," said I. "You're welcome to use the net in your own fashion. Gentlemen fish otherwise."

I think everybody was astounded. Only the pretty Countess Manntrapp shot an amused glance at me.

The others were dreadfully shocked. As for the Admiral he got to his feet almost dazed with rage; but before he could expel the bellowing fury which was congesting his features I lost my own temper and walked over to him.

"Behave yourself!" I said sharply. "I tolerate no bad manners under my roof. And if you show me any further disrespect you'll have to leave my house!"

I think he was too amazed to roar. King Ferdinand waddled over to him and plucked him by the arm, restraining him. King Constantine burst into a heavy laugh:

"Here, gentlemen! This will never do! It's all a misunderstanding. No offense was intended, Mr. O'Ryan——"

"Monsieur Xenos," said I, "it is difficult, I fancy, for a Prussian Admiral to avoid taking the offensive—except at sea."

And I walked into the house amid the most profound and paralyzed silence that ever assailed my ears.

Smith, in the living-room, having heard it all, was doubled up with laughter, but I was in no mood for mirth.

"Did you hear what Admiral Lauterlaus said to me!" I demanded, still hot. "Did you hear what that Prussian had the impudence to say to me under my own roof?"

"Yes, and I heard what you said to him, Michael!" And off he went into another fit of laughter.

"You don't know how funny it is," he said. "They've all been conspiring and perspiring all day long shut up in Tino's apartment with those two smelly Bolsheviks. And just when they'd come to some agreement about slicing up the world and ruling it among themselves, along you come and take all the joy out of life by sitting on a Prussian admiral!"

"I certainly shall put him out of the house if he's impudent to me again," said I, wrathfully. "And it will be tough on him if I do, because an avalanche has blocked the pass and we're all sewed up here together!"

"What!" exclaimed Smith with lively interest.

"It's a fact, Smith. The entire snow-field on the south shoulder of the Bec de l'Empereur let go about an hour since. Didn't you hear it?"

"I heard what I took to be thunder. Do you mean we're blocked from the outside world?"

"Completely."

"We can't dig out?"

"Who's to dig?"

"Good business!" he said, plainly delighted by the news. "How long will it last?"

"Thusis says they'll start digging from the other side, but that it may take weeks."

"Thusis knows about this?"

"She was with me at the time," said I, blushing.

He looked at me absently: "I wonder," he mused, "what Thusis thinks about the situation now."

"Our sudden isolation here?"

"Exactly."

"She doesn't seem to like it.... Tell me something, Smith?"

"What?"

"Do you know why Thusis and Clelia and Josephine Vannis and Raoul Despres are here?"

"I can guess," he replied, coolly.

"They came here," said I, "to nab Tino and that murderous ass, Ferdinand, and spirit them across the frontier into France."

"I believe so," he said in a serene but preoccupied voice.

"Now they can't do it," I added, "because the only way out of this valley is blocked."

"Quite so."

"Smith?"

"Yes."

"What do you think of their doing such a thing?"

"It's all right but they can't get away with it."

"Would you—help them?"

"They haven't asked me."

"Would you?" I persisted.

"Would you, Michael?"

"Well, if I do, the Swiss Government would confiscate my property. If Thusis and I succeeded in kidnapping this bunch of Kings, I'd lose this place."

"And if you failed to bag your Kings," remarked Smith, "the Swiss Government would still confiscate your estate and lock you up besides."

"And if you went into this affair," said I, "the Swiss would cancel your forestry contract."

"That," said he with a grin, "would be ruinous, wouldn't it?"

"What are you, anyway, Smith?" I demanded bluntly.

"A Viking. What do you think I am?"

"An agent," I replied darkly.

"Timber agent," he nodded.

"Timber nothing. Much less a Viking. I'm on to you, Smith."

"Do you think you are?"

"Well, do you wish to know what I believe you to be?"

"You probably have guessed. So don't say it too loud, Michael. Besides, I have taken no pains to conceal my business from you."

"I think you are an agent of the United States Secret Service," said I. "And I think you learned, somehow or other, that this bunch of Kings was coming here to conspire. And I think you very cleverly picked me up in Berne with a view to being invited here so that you could watch their activities and keep your government informed. How near right am I?"

"You ought to know," he retorted, laughing.

"Well then—if I do know—what are you going to do about this enterprise of Clelia and Thusis? Help them collar this royal gang and smuggle them across the frontier into France?"

He shook his head: "No, I can't do that."

"Your duties do not permit such amusements?"

"No. I am engaged to fulfill a definite duty. In fact I'm pledged to carry out a certain mission. It's a matter of honor. I'm sorry."

"It limits you?"

"It does."

"Checks any adventurous or romantic inclination toward aiding Thusis and Clelia to nab Tino & Co.?"

"I'm afraid it does."

"So you can't do any kidnaping, Smith?"

He laughed. "Oh, as far as that goes, I may have to do some."

"Kidnaping?"

"Possibly."

"You're a strange creature, Smith. And, speaking of strange creatures, who the devil is that Princess Pudelstoff? She talks English like an east-side Jewess."

"She is."

"W-what!!!"

"Certainly."

"The Princess Pudelstoff!"

"Her name was Leah Puppsky. She's the sister of Leo Puppsky, the Bolshevik envoy sent here with his confrere Isidore Wildkatz by Trotzky and Lenine to confer with Tino and Ferdie. She was once pretty—and she acted in an east-side theatre with Nazimova. Prince Pudelstoff was an attaché of the Russian Embassy at the time. He saw her act, fell in love, and married her,—of course with the Czar's knowledge and consent. But why the Czar let him do it is one of those diplomatic mysteries which remain unfathomed. Some believe that Rasputin had a reason for approving such an alliance." He shrugged.

"What a strange, fat, vulgar, good-natured woman," said I. "And what a grotesque company! Can you beat it?—Bulgar and Bolsheviki, King, Queen, Countess, Baron, Admiral, all jumbled up in this little rest-house where I am trying to live in peace and privacy. And now comes an act of God called an avalanche!—and we're all trapped together—you and I, Thusis and Clelia, and this beastly Bulgarian with his beak of a bird of prey; and that vulgar Greek King and his vixen of a wife,—Oh, Lord!"

"I'm glad God acted," he said cheerfully.

"You're glad that avalanche fell?"

"Yes; I'm very much relieved."

"Why, in the name of Heaven?"

"It simplifies my duties," he said, smiling. And that's all I got out of him except that he advised me to have nothing to do with this enterprise of Thusis and her sister.

"They'll only get you into mischief," he said. "It's a perfectly crazy scheme. Anyway I think it's nipped in the bud, now."

"If the avalanche hadn't fallen——"

"That makes a difference. But it couldn't have been done anyway. So you'd better not encourage Thusis by enlisting with her as a recruit, Michael. Avalanche or no avalanche it can't be done."

"Smith," said I, "if Thusis needs me I am going to help her bag this brace of kings."

"You are?"

"I am."

"You'll lose your property."

"I can't help that."

Smith glanced up at me curiously: "You are in love, Michael.

"I think I am."

"Don't be."

"What!"

"Don't be in love," he repeated gently. "It isn't any use. It's no good, Michael."

What he said annoyed me and he perceived it.

"Oh Lord," he said wearily, "this is a mess all around. You don't know what a mess it is, Michael. But all I can tell you is, don't fall in love with Thusis! Because it won't do you any good."

"What do you mean? Do you know who Thusis really is?"

"No, I don't. But I do know that it will do you no good to fall in love with her."

"Has it done you any good to fall in love with her sister Clelia?" I retorted sharply.

"Not a particle."

"Then why have you done it?"

He winced but said pleasantly: "I fell in love with her before I realized it. Now I'm falling out of love with her. I'm curing myself.... Besides, she cares nothing about me.... It will be easier for me to cure myself than for you to recover if you fall in love."

"Thusis will not listen to a serious word from me," said I with sudden bitterness. "I ought to try to cure myself now! ... But I don't want to."

"Michael," he said, "the pretty Thusis, also, had better be very careful, because she already is as close to caring for you seriously as it is safe for any young girl to care for a man whom she knows she never is going to marry."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, although I do not know who Thusis really is, I do know that she is not going to marry you. And I do not believe you will ever see Thusis again after this herd of conspirators leaves Swiss soil."

I thought very hard for a while. Then: "Smith, I have become firmly convinced that Thusis is the original of The Laughing Girl! Find out who she was and you will learn who Thusis is. I'm certain of this. Now who was this Laughing Girl?"

"Nobody knows."

"Have you tried to find out?"

"Yes."

"Did you learn anything at all?"

"Not much."

"What did you learn?"

"That the photographs of The Laughing Girl are not permitted to be sold in Italy."

I looked at him, perplexed. He shrugged his shoulders: "Photographs for sale in European cities," he said, "are usually portraits of celebrities—actresses, demi-mondaines, royalties. Do you suppose Thusis to be one of these?"

"Good heavens!"

"One of the three alternatives is, of course, unthinkable. Your choice would seem to lie, then, between royalty and the drama. But—the photographs of the Italian Royal family are sold everywhere in Italy. So are photographs of pretty actresses. Why is the sale of The Laughing Girl forbidden in Italy?"

"Forbidden? You didn't say that."

"Forbidden," he repeated calmly.

"That's very strange," said I. "What does it signify, Smith?"

"Well, of course, I have my own theory as to that."

"You don't care to discuss it?"

He shook his head.

"No, Michael. But it seems to fit in with my general idea concerning the identity of Thusis."

"And do you, too, believe that Thusis is the original of The Laughing Girl?" I asked.

"I have come to believe so."

"Then," said I, "I shall marry her! I've been in love with that photograph ever since I laid eyes on it, and now, when I've found the original, do you suppose I shall let it go at that? You don't know the O'Ryans!"

He began to laugh, but my excitement was rising.

"I'm going to make love to her," said I. "I'm going to help her bag these kings if she wants them. And when we tie them neck and heels and smuggle them into France and turn them over to a pair of strapping gendarmes I shall enlist with the American forces in France, whether Thusis accepts me for her husband or not. That, Smith, is my unalterable decision and my inflexible programme! And my property in Switzerland can go to the devil!"

"There are," said Smith with a peculiar smile, "two reasons why you should not remain in love with Thusis. One is that she won't marry you."

"What's the other?"

"The other is that she couldn't marry you if she wished to."

There was a short silence, then he went on: "Also there are two reasons why you should not help Thusis to kidnap Tino and Ferdie. One is that she isn't able to."

"What's the other?"

"The other is that—I won't let her."

I felt myself growing red and angry.

"That sounds almost pro-hun," said I.

"It does sound so," he admitted.

"Of course you're not pro-German," I added incredulously.

"Of course not," he rejoined calmly.

"Then——"

"I can't explain. I'm merely warning you not to aid her in this affair."

"Does Thusis know your attitude?"

"No, but she will."

"You are going to tell her?"

"No; but you are."

"I certainly shall," said I, warmly. "And I'd like to know why you are interfering with what she desires to do."

"I can't tell you why, Michael; but I'll tell her why—if she asks me."

"You may be very sure that Thusis will ask you, Smith," said I, perplexed to the verge of exasperation by his amazing attitude.

"Suppose you tell her," he said, amused. "All you need do is to repeat this couplet to her:

"Grecian gift and Spanish fig

Help the fool his grave to dig!"

"What idiot's jargon is that!" I demanded.

"A jargon that is likely to hold our pretty Thusis for a while. It is a word of warning—a signal of danger used by members of a secret society known as the Ægean League. Also it is likely to start her looking for me. And when she finds me I think she'll listen to reason and renounce this silly and useless attempt to trap royalty wholesale for export purposes. Not," he added gaily, "that I shouldn't expire with laughter to see Raoul and you, for example, take that pair of kings by the slack of the pants and run them Spanish into France. I'd applaud it, old top. I'd give frequent cheers during the process. But Thusis and Clelia mustn't start any such shindy. No! And if they inquire why, just repeat that verse to them and refer them to me."

"Then you are not here to watch these hun conspirators?" I asked in astonishment.

"Only incidentally."

"Do you mean to say that you are here, primarily, to watch Thusis and Clelia?"

"That is exactly why I am here, Michael. And I don't mind your telling them so. I myself was going to tell them. I had intended to break the news to them to-night. But the avalanche makes it unnecessary; they can't get out of this valley with their cartload of kings, now. However, let me suggest that you repeat that couplet to Thusis."

"This," said I, "is a most astounding and disagreeable series of complications. I don't understand them. I don't understand Thusis or you or that bagful of boches downstairs."

"Don't try to, old chap," he said in his friendly way. "And above all, don't break your heart over Thusis. For when the snow that blocks the pass melts, or when somebody digs through, I don't believe you are ever likely to see Thusis again."

His kindly sincerity scared and angered me.

"Watch me!" said I. "An O'Ryan never loves but once. But when he does love——"

"All right, old fellow. Go to it and God help you. They say He has a warm spot in His heart for the Irish."

I nodded, looking at him very seriously: "It's quite impossible," said I, "that she's royal. And if she's an actress I don't care, because I'm so deeply in love with her that I don't know whether I'm afoot or on horseback. And when an O'Ryan feels that way the world is his or he continues on to Heaven."

"Does it really mean Life or Death to you already, Michael?" he asked gravely.

"Life or death, sink or swim, survive or perish,—as some Yankee orator said once. Nothing matters now except Thusis. That's my only reason for living. Yesterday I wanted wealth, to-day my estate can go to the deuce. Yesterday I was a rather sober, decent citizen, perpetrating interior decoration in New York, to-day I figuratively kick the varnish off period furniture, tear down tapestries, smash Chinese pottery, and wipe my feet on the rags of Renaissance! Art is nothing! Thusis is everything. If she wants a few kings to play with, she shall have them. I'll bag them for her. I'll do anything in the world for her. And if that's not enough I'll step off this damned old planet and pull wires aloft for the honor and glory and happiness of the noblest, sweetest, loveliest, most beauti——"

A slight exclamation behind me checked my excited confession.

Slowly turning in my tracks I beheld Thusis at the door in cap and apron.

There was a terrific silence.

Then Thusis, her fair face deeply flushed, dropped us a curtsey.

"Dinner is served, sir," she said faintly. And was gone like a shadow.

XV

A TRAVELING CIRCUS

The royal traveling circus was already seated and whetting its appetite with hors d'oeuvres, when I arrived in the dining-room and, saluting my guests, took my place as host at the head of the long table.

Heaven! What a collection! Being incognito, I was not supposed to be aware of the identity of royalty; but Thusis had seated the ex-queen of Greece on my right and Tino on my left, and, beyond Queen Sophia, she had put the Tsar of all the Bulgars,—with a clean napkin where he had soiled the cover.

The new accessions to this traveling show had, very evidently, decided among themselves the places at table to which they were entitled by precedence of rank. And these they now occupied.

The two Bolsheviki, Leo Puppsky and Isidore Wildkatz, had been relegated to the foot of the table where they sat hunched up and scowling about them until noodle soup presently preoccupied them.

I do not know which one of my guests was the noisiest: the Tsar of all the Bulgars sucked up his soup with the distressingly acute sound of a sick horse drinking; the Princess Pudelstoff lapped and slobbered and wheezed in her slopping plate; but the technique of the Bolsheviki was simple and more effective, being reduced to a primitive, incessant gobbling noise, followed by patient and persistent scraping.

Behind my chair stood Raoul as extemporary butler; Thusis and Clelia in spotless caps and aprons sped lightly hither and thither; while from the depths of the kitchen, Josephine Vannis fed us all with the most delectable dinner which I think I ever tasted.

Ordinary wine being included on my bill of fare, the Tsar guzzled it while his sly eye of a wild pig roved about reading labels on the various bottles of more expensive wine ordered by the others.

The Bolsheviki, having plenty of the Russian people's money, demanded "bowcoo tchimpagne"; King Tino drank goblets of a rather heavy claret; his wife sipped only bottled water, while her cold, steely eyes glittered from guest to guest.

I conversed politely when spoken to; otherwise I made no effort. The Prussian admiral worked his bushy eyebrows and his coarse, fan-shaped beard while munching, but whether in hostility to me or because he was built that way, I did not know, and did not care.

He and Baron von Bummelzug sat all hunched up side by side, gobbling in their whiskers and exchanging Teutonic grunts which seemed to be their substitute for human conversation. Herr Secretary Gizzler, factotum to the Baron, and seated with the Bolsheviki, devastated his plate and seized ravenously upon anything eatable in his vicinity, which presently elicited a chattering protest from Puppsky; and a quarrel rapidly developed until squelched by General Count von Dungheim.

"Silence!" he said angrily: "you make so much noise that it is impossible to hear oneself eat!"

The Princess Pudelstoff nodded violently, balancing a knifeful of mashed potato before committing it to its dreadful destiny:

"They act," she said in English, "like they was never to a high-toned dinner. It's them two Bolsheviks that ain't had a square meal since Hindy licked the Rooshians at the Missouri Lakes."

Leo Puppsky made a violent gesture at her with the leg of a chicken:

"Is that the way to speak of us?" he said to his sister. "And you a Russian and my own sister!"

"Ain't it true?" she asked with a loud laugh. "Get sense, Leo. There won't be nothing to eat in Rooshia so long as you act ugly to Germany——"

"Princess!" interrupted the queen of Greece, sharply.

"That's right," said Tino in a loud, good humored voice; "one doesn't discuss politics while dining. No! One pays strict attention to what one eats and drinks; eh, Sophy?"

The queen ignored him, and he slyly batted one eye at the pretty Countess Manntrapp, his neighbor, and tossed off a brimming goblet of deep red claret.

"Aha!" he said, smacking his lips, "that beats even the wine of Naxos. Did you ever drink Naxos wine, Countess?"

"No," said she; "is it very excellent?"

"Heady, Countess, heady! After you crack one bottle you begin to see the old gods of Greece sitting beside you on pink clouds in their underclothes——"

"Tino!" snapped the Queen.

The Countess laughed. "I'd like to see them." She looked across at me with her fascinating, audacious smile: "Wouldn't you like to drink Naxos wine with me, Mr. O'Ryan, and see the old time gods come down out of the blue sky and sit at table all about you?"

"It seems to me," said I, bowing, "that Aphrodite has already arrived among us mortals."

She laughed, acknowledging the raw compliment, then pursing up her red mouth but uttering no sound she nevertheless formed her question so that I read every word on her mobile lips:

"Do—you—know—anybody—who—would—play—Adonis—to—my—Venus?"

And she laughed her daring little laugh and made me a pretty gesture, intercepted by Ferdinand of Bulgaria who took it for himself and continued to ogle her out of passionate, pig-like eyes until further engrossed in a new relay of food.

It was a dreadful dinner party. Both the kings made life wretched for Clelia and Thusis as they waited on table, slyly pinching them when unobserved until, from Thusis' burning cheeks and trembling hands as she served me, I almost feared she would launch a plate at the royal libertines.

It was a weird company. The Bolsheviki chattered and grabbed at food; all the Germans ate noisily—excepting only the pretty Countess Manntrapp, who had been Lila Shezawitch, and not a Teuton by birth.

Constantine had had more claret than was good for him and now he was pouring into himself countless little glasses of brandy, and was becoming loudly and somewhat coarsely talkative, retailing bits of barrack-room gossip to General Count von Dungheim and cracking dubious jokes with Baron von Bummelzug until his wife spoke to him with such cutting contempt that he winced and relapsed into a half hazy and giggling exchange of whispers with the Countess Manntrapp. As for the Princess Pudelstoff, she had never for one moment ceased stuffing herself. Sweat stood in oily beads on her forehead and cheeks; her fat hands plied knife and fork and spoon without interruption save when she grasped her beer mug in both jeweled hands and drew mighty and noisy draughts from the heavy quart receptacle.

The whole performance at my table was becoming a horrid nightmare to me; I could not see any signs of satiation among these dreadful people—any desire to call it off and quit and retire to their respective sties.

Smith caught my eye and I saw him suppress the smile that twitched his features.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that I had news for the traveling circus that might modify their appetites; and I said, distinctly, and raising my voice sufficiently to command attention from everybody:

"There is some very serious information which I regret that it is necessary to share with everybody here. I did not wish to spoil your appetites. But dinner is over, and I had better speak."

All feeding ceased; everybody stared at me.

"I regret that I am obliged to inform you," I continued, "that the snow field on the south flank of the Bec de l'Empereur, loosened by the warm deluge of rain, has fallen, completely choking the pass which is our only entrance to and exit from this valley."

"An avalanche!" exclaimed the Queen of Greece sharply.

"Yes, madame, a very bad one."

"We are blocked in," she gasped.

"Absolutely."

At that the Princess Pudelstoff uttered a squeak of fright: "We're all going to starve!" she squealed in alarm; "that's what he means! There isn't enough food for us and we'll all die the way they are dying in Rooshia——"

"There's plenty of food," I interrupted.

"Ach, Gott sei dank! Gott sei dank!" she shouted, clapping her pudgy hands and seizing knife and fork again.

But the others were now rising from their seats, exchanging glances full of anxiety and perplexity; and, as I left the room with Smith, I saw them all gathering around the Ex-Queen of Greece as though general consternation had seized them. Only the Princess Pudelstoff remained in her chair, devouring tartlets, her triple chin agitated by a series of convulsive shudders as she bolted sections of pastry too large for her.

Coffee was to be served al fresco; Raoul had set a number of green iron tables and chairs out by the fountain.

"My heavens, Smith," said I, "we should serve them coffee in a common trough. Did you ever before endure such misery at any table?"

"Oh, yes," he said, "I've lived in Germany."

"Well I haven't, and I'm going to skip the demitasse," I rejoined. And I walked around the house and entered the back door where two latticed arbors flanked the stone walk.

Here I seated myself and lighted a cigarette, still unnerved by the martyrdom of that dinner table.

It was quiet and peaceful in the sunset light under my roof of curly grape leaves where sun spots glowed amid the tender green and two little active birds climbed busily and silently about the foliage in search of aphids.

I had been sitting there for ten minutes, perhaps, when the door opened behind me and Thusis appeared with coffee. Her lovely features still were tinged with the rosy glow of recent wrath; her gray eyes were still brilliant with the same emotion.

"Coffee, if you please, sir?" she said crisply.

I had risen, smiling.

"You need not have taken so much trouble, Thusis——"

"Pardon. It is what servants are hired for."

"Why do you keep up this masquerade with me?" I asked, laughingly, taking the cup from the tray.

But Thusis seemed to be in no pleasant humor, and she turned to go without answering.

"Thusis!"

She halted.

"I'm sorry those beastly kings annoyed you at table——"

"They're men," she retorted angrily. "What can a woman expect?"

"Do you think that is fair to me, Thusis, to lump me with men in general?"

"I don't know what's fair to you. And I'm really not very particular about it. Little chance that men ever suffer too much from being misunderstood in this world."

"You are amazingly unjust, do you realize it?"

"I'm not sure that I am," she said sullenly. "You made your début by trying to kiss your own cook. Tino is coarser, he pinches; Ferdie the furtive, pushes one with his knees and rolls wild eyes at one. There are three masculine examples. Take your choice, Monsieur," she added, going.

"Wait!"

She turned haughtily, her gray eyes suddenly insolent.

"Because you are hurt and offended and humiliated by a pair of scoundrels," said I, "is no reason why you should visit your displeasure on me."

"I make no difference in men."

"Not even in the man who is in love with you?"

"Love? Love!" She laughed, not agreeably. "I am not flattered, Monsieur, to have offered to me the same adoration which you were quite willing to bestow upon your cook. I tell you all men are alike!—including the Pharisee."

"Do you mean me?"

"Haven't you practically just thanked God you are not like other men?"

"What have I done to deserve this, Thusis? I'm trying to be patient——"

"You don't need to be. Heaven deliver me from a patient man!"

Then I blew up: "You listen to me, you little idiot," I said in a low, enraged tone; "I'm in love with you and you can't help it whatever you choose to do about it. You came here as a servant and I fell in love with you as a servant. You are probably something else—God knows what—and I'm more in love than ever with God-knows-what! I don't care what you are, servant, bourgeoise, actress, princess, or demi-mondaine——"

"What!"

"I tell you I wouldn't care. I love you. I want to marry you——"

"Marry me if I were—a demi——"

"Yes!" I said violently; "yes! yes! yes! It's too late to have whatever you are make any difference to me. I'm an O'Ryan and I love only once."

"Do you suppose I'm flattered by what you've just shouted at me? You'd marry me—or you'd do the same for a demi——"

"Confound it!" I exclaimed, "it's you, whatever you are! Can't you understand——"

"Certainly I can. All men are men first, last, all the time. That Serbian married Draga; any man will do as much for any drab if he can't have her otherwise. I've seen enough of men, I tell you. Royal, noble, landed gentry, bourgeoisie, peasantry—all are men first, last, all the time; and all are exactly alike!"

She clenched her hand and confronted me with scornful eyes:

"And why any honest woman should ever fall in love with one of them is one of those ignoble mysteries which I have never cared to fathom!"

Her contempt and my own fury almost paralyzed me.

I said, finally, in a very quiet voice, not my own:

"Very well, Thusis, expect nothing more of me than you expect of any man—including those royal gentlemen out yonder. And I'll not disappoint you."

I stepped nearer, forcing a smile:

"You've succeeded in slaying any consideration I entertained for your sex. You've enlightened me. In future I'll take them as I find them, easily, lightly, good-humoredly, with gaiety, with gratitude to the old time gods when they send a pretty one my way."

And I smiled at Thusis who looked darkly back at me with the faintest hint of uncertainty in her eyes.

"It is wonderful," said I, "how a word or two from a woman sometimes clears up the most serious situations. Your revelations concerning my sex in general have opened my eyes. I take your word for it that man is always man, as you explain so convincingly, and that he is, first, last, and all the time, merely a jackass endowed with speech."

I emptied my coffee cup and set it upon the tray which she held in her left hand.

"I had," said I, "something else to tell you—and which had nothing whatever to do with love. But, on second thoughts, I am so certain that a self-sufficient girl like yourself is amply able to look out for herself, that I shall not bother to say what I had intended saying."

Her gray eyes became intently fixed on mine while her color came and went under the sting of irony.

But I made up my mind to let matters take their course. If she tried to body-snatch this Greek and Bulgarian carrion, let her! If Smith interfered, let him! What was it to me after all? I was becoming fed up on love and feminine caprice—on kings and queens and shocking manners,—on intrigue and treachery and counter plot.

Suddenly, as I stood there, a wave of disgust swept over me. I was sick of Switzerland; sick of the ridiculous property which was causing me all this trouble and discomfort; sick of the grotesque whim of Fate which had yanked me out of an orderly, unaccented life and a peaceful profession in Manhattan and had slammed me down here in the midst of love and Alps and kings!

"I'll chuck the estate and go home!" I exclaimed. "I'll go now, to-night!" And then I remembered the accursed avalanche.

She was watching me intently, curiously, and I noticed she had lost some of her colour.

"Do you suppose," said I, "that there is any way of climbing over that mass of snow?—any way of my getting out of this valley to-night?"

"Would you go if you could?" she asked in a rather colorless voice.

"Yes, I would," said I savagely. "I've had enough."

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry that I've had enough?" I sneered.

"Sorry you cannot leave the valley to-night," she said quietly.

"Then it is not possible?"

"I'm afraid not.... If it were, I also would leave this valley to-night."

"With a bagful of kings," I added.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Oh, no, you wouldn't," said I with unworthy satisfaction in my knowledge of Smith's mission. "And let me tell you a thing or two, Thusis. You seem to resemble, more or less, a very naughty little girl, spoiled but precocious, who has run away from school and is raising the devil out of bounds, throwing stones and ringing door-bells and defying policemen with derisive tongue. Pretty soon you'll be caught and led home and soundly spanked. And," I added fervently, "I'd like to be in the vicinity of that wood-shed when discipline begins."

My laughter was fairly genuine. I lighted a cigarette and, gazing at this girl who had so outrageously maligned me, felt so much better that a macabre sort of gaiety verging upon frivolity invaded me.

"All women," said I, "are women, first, last, and all the time."

Thusis flushed.

"I am wondering," said I airily, "whether the rôle of Adonis might suit me."

"What!" she exclaimed.

"Adonis," I repeated. "He was that poor fish of an amateur who played opposite Aphrodite. And got the hook. But the rôle is all right and it's a no-character part if you play it straight.... I'm wondering—" And I smiled at my own thoughts and blew three rings of smoke up at the sun-lit grape leaves overhead.

Suddenly Thusis unclosed her soft, fresh lips, which seemed a trifle tremulous:

"That woman," she said breathlessly, "is notorious in Vienna! And if you are—sufficiently abandoned—to d-degrade yourself by—an affair—with her——"

"But what do you care, Thusis?"

Her face flamed. "I care—that!" she said, snapping her white fingers. And turned swiftly on her heel.

XVI

THE COUNTESS

I was very unhappy. I was not only madly in love with Thusis but also mad enough to spank her. And I sat down in the arbor once more a prey to mixed emotions.

The two silent little birds had gone to bed. Soft mauve shadows lay across the scrubby foreland; snow peaks assumed the hue of pink pearls; a wavering light played through the valley so that the world seemed to quiver in primrose tints.

Then, through the pale yellow glory, a girl came drifting as though part of the delicate beauty of it all,—her frail, primrose evening gown and scarf scarcely outlined—scarcely detached from the golden clarity about her. It was as though she were lost in the monotone of living light the only accent the dusky symmetry of her head.

I had not realized that the Countess Manntrapp was so pretty.

I was not sure that she had discovered me at all until she turned her head en passant and sent me one of those vague smiles calculated to stir the dead bones of saints.

"I suppose," she said, "you only look lonely, but really you are not."

I was lonely and sore at heart. Possibly she read in my forced smile something of my state of mind, for she paused leisurely by the arbor and glanced about her at the grape leaves.

"Evidently," she said, "this spot is sacred to Bacchus. But I was not looking for gods or half-gods.... Do you prefer your own company, Mr. O'Ryan?"

"No, I don't," said I. So she entered the arbor and seated herself. There was only that one seat. With strictest economy it could accommodate two; but I had not thought of attempting it until she carelessly suggested it.

"How heavenly still it is," she murmured, an absent expression in her dark eyes. "Are you fond of stillness and solitude?"

"Not very," said I. "Are you, Countess?"

She said, dreamily, that she was, but her side glance belied her. Never did the goddess of mischief look at me out of two human eyes as audaciously as she was doing now. And it was so transparent a challenge, so utterly without disguise, that we both laughed.

I don't know why I laughed unless the soreness in mind and heart had provoked their natural reaction. A listless endurance of suffering is the first symptom of indifference—that blessed anodyne with which instinct inoculates unhappy hearts when the bitterness which was sorrow wears away and leaves only dull resignation.

"At dinner," she said, "I made up my mind that you are an interesting man. I am wondering."

"I came to a similar conclusion concerning you," said I. "But I'm no longer wondering how near right I am."

"Such a pretty compliment! Also it dissipates any doubts regarding you."

"Did you have any, Countess?"

"Well, you know what I asked you at dinner. You understood? You read lips, don't you?"

"I read yours."

"I wasn't sure. You gave me no answer."

We laughed lightly. "What answer can a mortal make when Aphrodite commands?" said I.

"Then you are willing to play Adonis?"

"Quite as willing—as was that young gentleman."

"That isn't kind of you, Mr. O'Ryan. He wasn't very willing, was he?"

"Not very. But possibly he had a premonition of the tragic consequences," said I, laughing. "One doesn't frivol with a goddess with impunity."

"Are you afraid?"

She turned in the narrow seat. She was altogether too near, but I couldn't help it. And I was much disturbed to find our fingers had become very lightly intertwined.

She was smiling when I kissed her. But after I had done it her smile faded, and the gay confidence in her expression altered.

I had never expected to see in her eyes any hint of confusion, but it was there, and a sort of shamed surprise, too—odd emotions for a hardened coquette with the reputation she enjoyed.

"You proceed too rapidly," she said, the bright but subtly changed smile still stamped on her lips. "There seems to be no finesse about Americans—no leisurely technique that masters the intricacies of the ante-climax. Did you not know that hesitation is an art; that the only perfect happiness is in suspense?"

"Didn't you want to be kissed?" I asked bluntly. "I had perhaps surmised that it might not be a disagreeable sensation. Was it?"

She seemed to have recovered her careless audacity, and now she laughed.

"At all events," she said, "I shall not repeat the experiment ... this evening." She laid one soft hand in mine with a gay little smile: "Let us enjoy our new friendship serenely and without undue emotion," she said. "And let me tell you how you have made me laugh at what you said to those absurd Prussians!"

We both laughed, but I was now on my guard with this girl who had come here in such company.

"No Prussian ever born ever knew how to make a friend," she said. "To-day they have the whole world against them—even your country——"

"I am Chilean," said I pleasantly.

"Are you really?"

"I think you and your friends are quite sure of that," said I drily.

"Suppose," she said in a lower voice, "I tell you that they are not my friends?"

I smiled.

"You wouldn't believe me?" she asked.

"What I believe and do not believe, dear Countess, should not disturb you in the slightest."

"I thought we were friends."

"Do you really think so?"

"I hope so. I wish it—if you do. And friendship does not fear confidences."

"Neutrals have no confidences to make. My country is not at war."

"Is not your heart enlisted?" she asked, smilingly.

"Is yours?"

"Yes, it is! See how my friendship refuses no confidence when you ask? I do not hesitate."

"On which side," said I, warily, "is your heart enlisted?"

"Shall I tell you?"

"If you care to."

She sat looking at me intently, her soft hand in mine. Then, with a pretty gesture, she placed the other hand over it, and her shoulder came into contact with mine.

"I am Russian," she said. "Is that not an answer?"