Front matter (continued 4)

"So is Puppsky," I remarked.

For a second an odd expression came over her face and it turned quite white. Then she laughed.

"I'll tell you something," she said. "I have a girl friend. I love her dearly. I have a country. I love it still more dearly. The girl I love is Adelaide, Grand Duchess of Luxemburg. Prussia has practically annexed it. The country I love is Russia. Prussia holds it.... Do you still doubt me?"

"Good Lord," thought I, "how this girl can lie!" But I said: "Tell me about Luxemburg, Countess. Is it true that Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria means to marry the seventeen-year-old sister of the Grand Duchess Adelaide?"

"Yes," she said. And I distinctly heard her teeth snap.

"What sort of man is Ruprecht?" I inquired, to steer the conversation toward easier ground.

"Ruprecht! Did you ever see him?"

"No."

"Well, he has the manners of the barn-yard and the distinction of a scullion! Picture to yourself a man of fifty-seven with a head as square as a battered bullet and the bodily grace of a new-born camel. He is the stupidest, coarsest, commonest vulgarian in Europe.

"Why, the man is ridiculous! He once set all Munich laughing by appearing in the English Garden on skates wearing his spurs and saber. And all his military suite had to do likewise. Picture the result—and Ruprecht scarcely knew how to stand on the ice! Why their swords got between their legs and their spurs did the rest, and the entire lake resounded with the incessant crash of falling warriors."

She threw back her head and laughed; and I laughed too.

"Such a brute," she said. "His first wife, daughter of that kindly and philanthropic oculist, Karl Theodore of Tegernsee, died of his neglect and ill treatment. And now, at fifty-seven, he rolls his hog's eyes in his freckled face and smirks at a seventeen-year-old child—God help her!"

I gazed in amazement at the Countess Manntrapp. This was acting with a vengeance. Such perfection, such flawless interpretation of the rôle she was playing for my benefit, I had never dreamed possible. No emotion could appear more genuine, no sincerity more perfectly mimicked. Here was an actress without equal in my entire experience.

Suddenly I caught her eye, and turned very red.

"You don't believe me," she said calmly, and dropped her head.

There was a painful silence between us. Presently she looked up at me, flushed, curious, amused:

"You take me for a Hun, don't you?"

"If you are not pro-German," said I, much embarrassed, "what are you doing with those people?"

"Watching them. And you don't believe that, either?"

"I'm sorry, Countess."

"Why do you doubt me?"

"Because only a pro-German would confide to a stranger that she is not one. Were you really in the Allied service you'd keep your own council. Secret agents don't betray themselves to strangers. You have no means of knowing where my sympathies lie. How do you know I am not pro-German?"

"By your letters."

"My letters?"

"I opened several," she said naïvely.

"Where!"

"In Berne."

"You stole my letters?"

"Yes, I had to."

"How did you do it?"

"The postman is in my pay."

"That," said I angrily, "is a most outrageous confession, Countess."

"But I had to know what your politics are," she explained gently. "Besides, if I had not stolen all your letters the Swiss authorities would have opened them and found out that you are pro-Ally in sentiment. And then you would not have been permitted to come here and live in this house. And all these people would not have come here either. And I should have had nobody to help me while keeping these people under surveillance."

"You count on me to help you?" I demanded, too astonished to remain angry.

"May I not?" she asked sweetly.

"So that's the reason," said I, "that you let me kiss you."

"I must be honest, it is."

With every atom of conceit knocked out of me, wincing, chagrined, I found nothing to say to this pretty woman who sat so close beside me and looked at me with a half smile hovering on her lips and out of sweet, dark eyes that seemed utterly honest—God help her.

"It is only your vanity that is smarting a little," she said, smiling, "not your heart. I haven't touched that at all."

"How do you know?" I retorted.

"Because you are in love with somebody else, Mr. O'Ryan."

"With whom?" I demanded defiantly.

"I don't know. But you are in love. A woman can tell."

"I am not in love," said I with angry emphasis, recollecting the treatment meted out to me by Thusis. "I'm not in love with anybody." I caught her doubting but interested eyes fixed intently on me—"unless," I added recklessly, "I'm in love with you."

"But you're not."

We looked at each other curiously, almost searchingly, not inclined to laugh yet ready, perhaps, for further mischief. Why not preoccupy my mind with this amusing and pretty woman, and slay in my heart all regard for Thusis?

So I kissed her with that object in view. She said nothing—scarcely defended herself—sitting with pretty head lowered and white jeweled hands tightly folded in her lap.

"I'll take you trout-fishing," said I, determined to exterminate and root out all tender memories of Thusis.

She looked up: "May I ask you a question?"

"What is it?" I returned, suspiciously, instantly on my guard again.

"Who is Mr. Smith?"

"A Norwegian." And I explained Smith's business with the Swiss government.

She nodded absently. Probably she did not believe this. As far as that was concerned, neither did I.

"Answer me a question, will you, Countess?" said I in my turn. She smiled: "What is it?"

"Is your kiss really worth the information you extract from me?"

In spite of her light laughter she turned quite pink, and when I bent toward her again, she laid her arm across her lips, defending them.

Then, as I was preparing for further indiscretion, the door behind us opened and was closed again instantly. I knew it was Thusis. The certainty chilled my very bones.

"Who was it?" I asked carelessly.

"Only the waitress," said she.

"The red-haired one?"

"I believe so. Is she Swiss?"

I did not answer.

The Countess looked up and repeated the question. "Where did you find her?" she added.

There was a short silence. An almost imperceptible change came over her features. Then, daintily, and by degrees, she inclined her head a little nearer.

But it was not in me to betray Thusis for a kiss. Slowly, however, I became aware that I was betraying myself.

Presently the Countess rose in the gathering dusk, and I stood up immediately.

She inspected me steadily for a full minute, then that almost imperceptible smile edged her lips again and she gave me my congé with a gentle nod.

XVII

MORE MYSTERY

I discovered Smith sitting on the rim of the fountain all alone in the dusk.

"Good heavens!" I blurted out, "was any man ever so completely entangled in the web of intrigue as I am? Plot, counterplot, camouflage, mystery—I'm in the very middle of the whole mess!

"I don't know who anybody is or what they're up to! Who is Thusis? Who is Clelia? Who is Josephine Vannis? Raoul? The Countess Manntrapp? And who are you, for that matter? I don't know! I don't pretend to guess."

"What's the trouble?" he asked, amused.

"Trouble! I don't know. There's all kinds of trouble lying around. I'm in several varieties of it. Where is the traveling circus?"

"In Tsar Ferdie's apartments."

"Probably conspiring," I added.

"Probably."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Oh, I'm not conspiring," he said, laughing, "I'm no saint to converse with the fishes in your fountain."

"Where is Clelia?"

He said he didn't know but somehow I gathered the impression that she was somewhere behind the lighted kitchen windows and that Smith was hanging around in hopes she might come out to take the air by starlight.

"Have you seen Thusis?" I asked guiltily. And felt my ears burning in the dark.

"Why, yes," he said. "She walked down the road a few moments ago."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Probably she went to take a look at the snow blockade," said I.

He nodded.

"Perhaps," I added carelessly, "I had better saunter down that way."

"No," he said, "you'd better not."

"Why?" I asked sharply.

"Starlight and Thusis might go to a young man's head."

"I'm no longer in love," said I in the most solemn tones I had ever used. "I am now able to contemplate Thusis without the stormy emotions which once assailed me, Smith. All that is over. To me she is merely an interesting and rather pathetic woman. I feel kindly toward Thusis. I wish her well. I would willingly do anything I could to——"

"Piffle."

"What the devil do you mean by that?" I demanded.

"What the devil do you mean by kidding yourself?"

"Haven't I just explained?"

"You've given yourself away. A man doesn't utter pious sentiments about a girl he no longer cares for. He doesn't bother to explain his regenerated attitude toward her. He doesn't trouble himself to talk about her at all. Nor does he go roaming after her by starlight. If you really care for her no longer, let her alone. If you do care you'll get mad at what I say—as you're doing—and start off to find her in the starlight—as you're doing——"

But I was too exasperated to listen to such stuff.

I discovered her, finally, in the starlight just ahead of me,—a slim shadow on the high-road, outlined against a stupendous mass of snow which choked the valley like a glacier.

She heard my steps on the hard stone road, looked over her shoulder, then turned sharply, paying me no further attention, even when I came up beside her.

"Gracious!" said I, attempting an easy tone and manner; "what a tremendous fall was here!"

"I have known greater falls," she said very quietly.

"Really?"

"Yes; I once had a friend whose fall was greater."

"Poor fellow! He fell off a precipice, I presume."

"He fell from his high estate, Mr. O'Ryan."

"Oh. Did he also have an estate in the Alps?"

She said scornfully: "He fell in my esteem—deep, Mr. O'Ryan—into depths so terrible that, even if I leaned over to look, I could never again perceive him."

"Poor fellow," I muttered, chilled to the bone again.

"Yes." she said calmly, "it was tragic."

"D-did you care for him, Thusis?" I ventured, scared half to death.

"I trusted him."

"D-don't you trust him any more?"

"He is dead—to me," she said coldly.

There ensued a silence which presently I became unable to endure.

"You know, Thusis, that man isn't dead——"

"He might better be!"

"You don't understand him!"

"I no longer wish to."

"He loves you!"

"He does not!" she cried in tones so fierce that I almost jumped.

"Thusis," said I in a miserable voice, "you hurt and wounded that man until he was almost out of his senses——"

"And he lost no time in consoling himself with another woman!"

"He didn't know what he was doing——"

"He seemed to! ... So did she!"

"Thusis—"

"Did you kiss her?"

"I——"

"Did you?"

"Yes."

I was so scared that my teeth chattered when Thusis turned on me in the starlight.

Her gray eyes were aflame; her little hands were tightly clenched. I hoped she would upper-cut me and mercifully put me to sleep, for this scene was like a nightmare to me.

Then, of a sudden, the slender figure seemed to wilt before my eyes,—shrink, bend, stand swaying with desperate hands covering the face.

"Michael," she whispered. "Michael!"—and her voice ended in a sigh.

Scared as I was I took her in my arms. She rested her face against my shoulder.

"You—you don't really care," I stammered, "do you, Thusis? Do you, my darling——"

"Oh, I don't know—I don't know. You've hurt me, Michael; I'm all hurt and—and quivering with your wound. I don't know!—I don't understand myself. My heart is sore—all raw and sore. So is my mind—the blow you dealt hurts me there, too——"

"But, Thusis dear! You wounded me, too——"

"Oh, I know.... I scarcely knew what I said. I don't know now what I'm saying—what I'm doing—here in your arms——" She tried to release herself, and, failing, buried her face against my shoulder with a convulsive little shudder.

"You must love me," I whispered unsteadily. "I can't live without you, Thusis."

"But I can't love you, Michael."

"Can't you find it in your heart to care for me?"

"In my heart, perhaps.... But not in my mind."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly that.... I can't consult my—my heart alone.... I must not. I dare not. I am obliged to consult my senses, too. And—dear Michael—my senses tell me that I may not care for you—must not fall in love—with you——"

"Why?"

After a silence she lifted her lovely head and looked up at me out of beautiful, distressed eyes that dumbly asked indulgence.

"Well, then, you need not tell me, Thusis."

"You'll know, some day."

"I'll know, some day, why I won you in spite of everything."

She gently shook her head.

"Yes," said I, "I shall win you, Thusis."

"My heart—perhaps."

"Your mind, too."

We remained so, for a while, not speaking lest the spell be broken. And at last she slowly disengaged herself from my arms, then, confronting me, placed both her hands in mine with a sudden impulse that thrilled me.

"Let it remain this way, then," she said. "Win my heart, if you care to. I don't mind going through life with my heart in your kind keeping, Michael. I had rather it were so. I should be less unhappy."

"Unhappy?"

"Yes—because I am going to be unhappy anyway. And if I knew that you once cared, it would be easier for me—in after years.... Michael——"

"Yes?"

"Would you care for that much of me?"

I drew her nearer.

"You must not kiss me," she whispered.

"I——"

"Please.... It is a sign of troth plighted.... And is desecration else.... Troth plighted is a holy thing. And that cannot be between us, Michael. That cannot happen.... And so, you must not touch my lips with yours—dear Michael.... Only my hand—if you do care for me——"

I kissed her hand—then, slowly, each finger and the fragrant palm, until it seemed to disconcert her and she withdrew it.

"Now take me back," she said in an uncertain voice that trembled slightly, "and remain my dear, frank, boyish friend.... And let me plague you a little, Michael. Won't you? And not be angry?" She asked so sweetly that I began to laugh—covered her hand with kisses—and laughed again.

"You little girl," I exclaimed—"oddly mature in some ways—a child in others—you may torment me and laugh at me now to your heart's content. Isn't laughter, after all, your heaven born privilege?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, Thusis! Thusis! I am more convinced than ever of what I have half believed. Before I ever set eyes on you I had begun to care for you. Before I ever heard your voice I had begun to fall in love with you. Thusis—my Thusis—loveliest—most wonderful of God's miracles since Eden bloomed—you are The Laughing Girl!"

"Michael——"

"You are!"

Suddenly, as she walked lightly beside me, resting on my arm, she flung up her head with a reckless, delicious little laugh: "I am The Laughing Girl!"

A slight yet exquisite shock went clean through me as I realized that even to the instant of her avowal I had not been absolutely convinced of her identity with the picture.

"And I wish to tell you," she went on, her smile changing, "that when the photograph—which unhappily has become so notorious—was taken, I never dreamed that it would be stolen, reproduced in thousands, and sold in every city of Europe!"

"Stolen!"

"Certainly! Do you imagine that I would have permitted its publicity and sale? Never has such an exasperating incident occurred in my life! And I am helpless. I can't prevent it."

"Who stole it?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. It was this way, Michael; it happened in my own home on the island of Naxos, and my sister Clelia and I were amusing ourselves with our cameras, dressing each other up and posing each other.

"And she dressed me—or rather almost un-dressed me—that way—isn't it enough to make a saint swear—for when I had developed the plate and had started to print, somebody stole the plate from the sill of the open window. And the next thing we knew about it was when all Europe was flooded with my picture under which was printed that dubious caption—'The Laughing Girl.' Can you imagine my astonishment and rage? Could anything more utterly horrid happen to a girl? Had I at least been fully dressed—but no: there I was in every shop window among actresses, queens, demi-mondaines, and dissipated dukes just as Clelia had posed me in the intimacy of our own rooms, all over jewels, some of me mercifully veiled in a silk scarf, audaciously at ease in my apparent effrontery—oh, Michael, it nearly killed me!"

"Didn't you do anything about it?"

"Indeed I did! But where these photographs were being printed we never could find out. All we were able to do was to forbid their importation into Italy."

"How did you manage that?" I asked curiously.

She hesitated, then carelessly: "We had some slight influence at court——"

"Influence?"

"Possibly it amounted to that," she said indifferently.

"You are known at court, Thusis?"

She shrugged: "We are not, I believe, completely unknown." She walked on beside me in silence for a few moments, then:

"I do not wish to convey to you that I am persona grata in Italian court circles."

"But if you are known at court, dear Thusis, how can you be otherwise than welcome there?"

"I am not welcome there."

"That is impossible."

"You adorable boy," she laughed, "I must beg of you to occupy yourself with your own affairs and not continue to occupy yourself with mine."

"That's a heartless snub, Thusis."

"I don't mean it so," she said, her hand tightening impulsively on my arm. "But, Michael dear, I don't wish you to speculate about my affairs. It does no good. Besides, the situation in which I find myself is fearfully complex, and you couldn't help me out of it."

"Perhaps I can, Thusis."

She laughed: "You are delightfully romantic. You almost resemble one of the old time cloak-and-sword lovers of that dear Romance which died so long ago on the printed page as well as in human hearts."

"It is not dead in my breast, Thusis."

"It is dead in every breast. Only its frail ghost haunts our hearts at moments."

"When I offered you my heart, Thusis, did you suppose it empty save for a trace of selfish passion?"

"Men are men.... I do not understand their hearts."

"Take mine; tear it apart, look into it,—even if I die of it. Will you?"

Her laugh became less genuine and there was no gaiety in it.

"Tell me what I should find in your heart if I dissected it?"

"Love—and a sword!"

"You—you offer me your life, Michael?"

"This life—and the next."

She made no answer, walking slowly on beside me, her arm linked in mine, the starlight glimmering on her bent head. Down the road beyond us the illuminated windows of my house glimmered. As we moved toward them along the stony highroad, I said:

"Thusis dear, I know nothing about you or about your affairs. I do not even guess your identity. But that you and your sister are here for the purpose of taking these miserable kings across the frontier into France, by violence, I do know.

"And this, also, I have learned, that, if you attempt to execute this coup-de-main, my friend Shandon Smith will do all he can to prevent it."

The girl stopped as though I had struck her and stared at me in the silvery lustre of the stars.

"What?" she said slowly.

"I have told you what Smith told me. He said that he didn't care whether or not I informed you. He added that, in case I chose to inform you, I should also repeat to you the following couplet:

'Grecian gift and Spanish fig

Help the Fool his grave to dig.'"

A bright flush stained her face yet she seemed to be more astounded than angry.

"Is it possible," she said, "that your friend Mr. Smith—this Norwegian promoter—repeated that couplet to you?"

"He certainly did repeat it to me, Thusis."

"Did he—did he tell you what it meant? Did he tell you anything more?"

"He mentioned a secret society called the Ægean League."

"This is amazing," she murmured, looking up the road at the lights of the house.

"Of all people," she added, "that man Smith, the last person on earth we could suspect." She passed her hand across her eyes—a gesture of perplexity and consternation:

"I wish to find Mr. Smith, Michael. I desire to see him immediately. Please let us walk faster."

We fell into a quick pace and she released my arm as the light from the windows fell on us.

"He was sitting by the fountain," I began.

"He is there now, with Clelia," she exclaimed, and walked directly toward him where he was seated near Clelia on the stone rim of the pool.

They looked up as we approached, and Smith rose.

"Mr. Smith," said Thusis with a trace of excitement in her voice, "have you any knowledge concerning my identity?"

If the blunt question were a shock to him he did not show it. He answered in his pleasant, even voice:

"I don't know who you are, Thusis."

"Have you any idea?"

"None."

"How can that be," she asked, flushing, "when you send me such a couplet?"

"I've told you the truth," he said simply; "I don't know who you are, Thusis. I don't even suspect." He turned and looked at Clelia who had risen from her seat on the fountain's edge.

"You do not like me, Clelia, and now you are going to like me less. You resented it when I preached at you concerning proper behavior for a young girl. And now that you learn I am going to interfere in your political and military maneuvers, I suppose you hate me."

Nobody moved or spoke for a moment. Then Clelia took a step toward Smith, and I saw her face had become deadly pale.

"No," she said, "I don't hate you. On the contrary I am beginning to like you. Because it takes a real man to tell the woman he loves that he means to ruin her."

"Clelia, you and Thusis are ruined only if I hold my hand."

"We are done for unless you hold your hand!" she said. She stepped nearer.

"Mr. Smith?" she said sweetly, "you think you are on your honor. You are not. He who has sent you here to thwart us is deceiving you."

"He who sent you here, Clelia,—and you, Thusis, is deceiving you," he rejoined very quietly.

Thusis said: "You know who sent us, and yet you don't know who we are! How can this be, Monsieur?"

"It's true. I do know who sent you here. But you don't!"

Clelia, still very pale, bent her gaze on him.

"Mr. Smith?"

"Yes, I hear you, Clelia."

"Suppose—suppose—I prove kinder to you."

"No," he said, grim and flushed.

Thusis turned sharply on her sister: "Have you given him your heart?"

Clelia answered, her eyes still fixed on Smith:

"I gave it to him from the first—even when I thought him a pious dolt. And was ashamed. And now that I know him for a man I'm not ashamed. Let him know it. I do care for him."

Smith stood rigid. Thusis, looking intently at Clelia, went to her and passed one arm around her waist.

"This can't be," she said. Clelia laughed. "But it is, sister. It isn't orthodox, it isn't credible, it is quite unthinkable that I should care for him. But I do; and I've told him so. Now he can ruin us if he wishes." And she flung a sweet, fearless glance at Smith which made him tremble very slightly.

Thusis turned to me an almost frightened face as though in appeal, then she caught her sister's hands.

"Listen!" she cried, "I also gave my heart as you gave yours, sister! I couldn't help it. I found myself in love—" She looked at me—"I was doomed to love him.

"But for God's sake listen, sister. It is my heart I give. My mind and my destiny remain my own."

"My destiny is in God's hands," said Clelia simply. "My mind and heart I give—" She looked at Smith—"and all else that is myself ... if you want me, Shan."

"You cannot do it!" exclaimed Thusis in a voice strangled with emotion. "You can do it no more than can I! You have no more right than have I to give yourself merely because you care! Your heart—yes! There is no choice when love comes; you can not avoid it. But you can proudly choose what to do about it!"

"I have chosen," said Clelia, "if he wants me."

Thusis clenched her hands and stood there twisting them, dumb, excited, laboring evidently under the most intense emotion.

And what all this business was about I had not the remotest notion.

Suddenly Thusis turned fiercely on her sister with a gesture that left her outflung arm rigid.

"Do you wish to find the irresponsible political level of those two Bolsheviki in there?" she said with breathless passion. "Are you really the iconoclast you say you are? I did not believe it! I can't. The world moves only through decent procedure, or it disintegrates. Where is your reason, your logic, your pride?"

"Pride?" Clelia smiled and looked at Smith: "In him, I think.... Since he has become my master."

"He is not our master!" retorted Thusis. "If what we came here to do is now impossible—thanks to a meddling and misled gentleman in Rome—is there not a sharper blow to strike at this treacherous Greek King and his Prussian wife and that vile, Imperial Hun who pulls the strings that move them?"

Clelia looked at Smith: "Do you know what my sister means?"

"Yes."

"Will you stop us even there?"

"I must."

Thusis, white with passion, confronted him:

"It is not you who are bound in honor to check and thwart us," she said unsteadily, "but your duped block-head of a master who exasperates me! Does he know from whom I take my orders?"

"Yes."

"I take them from the greatest, wisest, most fearless, most generous patriot in the world. I take my orders from Monsieur Venizelos!"

I started, but Smith said coolly: "Is that what you suppose, Thusis?"

"Suppose? What do you mean?" she demanded haughtily.

"I mean that you are mistaken if you and Clelia believe that your orders come from Monsieur Venizelos."

"From whom, then, do you imagine they come?" retorted Thusis.

"From Tino!"

"You dare——"

"Yes, I dare tell you, Thusis, how you have been deceived. Tino himself plotted this. Your orders are forgeries. Monsieur Venizelos never dreamed of inciting you to the activities in which you are now concerned——"

"That is incredible," said Thusis hotly. "I know who sent you here to check us and spoil it all—as though we were two silly, headstrong children! Tell me honestly, now; did not that—that gentleman in Rome give you some such impression of us?—that we were two turbulent and mischievous children?"

"I was not told who you were."

"But you were told that we are irresponsible and headstrong? Is it not true?"

"Yes."

"And you were sent here to see that we didn't get into mischief. Is it true?"

"Yes."

Thusis made a gesture of anger and despair:

"For lack of courage," she said tremulously, "a timid King refuses the service we try to render! We offer to stake our lives cheerfully; it frightens him. We escape his well meant authority and supervision and make our way into Switzerland to do him and Italy a service in spite of his timorous fears and objections. He has us followed by—who are you anyway, Mr. Smith?"

"I happen to be," he said pleasantly, "an officer in a certain branch of the Italian Army."

"Military Intelligence!" exclaimed Clelia. "And we were warned by Monsieur Venizelos!"

Thusis flung out her arms in a passionate gesture: "We offer the King of Italy two royal scoundrels! And he refuses. We offer the King of Italy two islands? And you tell us he refuses. When we were in Rome he laughed at us, teased us as though we had been two school-girls bringing him some crazy plan to end the war. And now when we are practically ready to prove our plan possible—ready to consummate the affair and give him the two most dangerous royal rascals in Europe—restore to Italy two islands stolen from her centuries ago—the King of Italy turns timid and sends a gentleman to ruin everything!"

"Because," said Smith pleasantly, "although King Constantine and Queen Sophia have been deposed, yet, were you to seize them and carry them across this frontier into France, Greece would resent it. So also would Switzerland. And the Allies would merely make two enemies out of an Allied country and a neutral one for the sake of a few odd kings and queens.

"And, moreover, if you should proceed, as you had planned, to the Cyclades; and if you succeed in fomenting a revolution in Naxos and Tenedos, and induce these two islands to declare themselves part of Italy, because seven hundred years ago a Venetian conquered them, then you turn Greece into a bitter enemy of Italy and of the Allies. And that is what you accomplish in exchange for a couple of little islands in the Ægean which Italy does not want."

"Then," retorted Thusis violently, "why did Monsieur Venizelos suggest that we attempt these things? Is the greatest patriot on earth a traitor or a fool?"

"No, but Constantine of Greece is. And the boche is his tutor. Oh, Thusis—Thusis! Can't you see you have been tricked? Can't you understand that Venizelos had no knowledge of these things you are attempting in all sincerity?—that you have been deluded by the treachery of the hun—that those who counseled you to this came secretly from Tino and the Kaiser, not from Venizelos?"

Thusis gazed at him bewildered. Clelia, too, seemed almost stunned.

"Do—do you mean to tell me," stammered Thusis, "that these kings know that Clelia and I are here to try to kidnap them?"

"No," said Smith coolly, "because I censored their mail in Berne. Their agents in Rome had warned them, in detail, by letter."

"Had those agents penetrated our identity?"

"They seemed to have no notion of it. But they described you both minutely."

Clelia seemed to come out of her trance. She turned to Thusis and said in a naïve, bewildered way:

"It's rather extraordinary, Thusis, that nobody seems to have found out who we really are.... It's almost as though we are not of as much importance as we have been brought up to suppose."

Thusis blushed hotly: "Because," she said, "nobody has discovered our incognito, is no reason for us to underrate our positions in Europe."

"Still—it is extraordinary that nobody recognizes us. And we use our own names, too. I can't account for it," she added honestly, "unless we are of much less importance than we have been accustomed to consider ourselves——"

Her voice was lost in a fearful scream from the house.

"Good Heavens!" said I, "what has happened?"

At that moment the door flew open and King Ferdinand waddled out in his wrapper and slippers.

"Help!" he shouted, "help! Is there a physician in the Alps?"

"I'm one," said Smith, coolly, "among other things."

And we all started hastily for the house.

XVIII

THE GANGSTERS

The Tsar of all the Bulgars, wearing a green and yellow wrapper, and bright blue slippers over his enormous flat feet, exhibited considerable nervousness as we entered the house.

"I wasn't doing anything," he said; "I trust that nobody will misunderstand me. Heaven is my witness——"

"What's the matter?" asked Smith tersely.

"The Princess Pudelstoff is screaming. I don't know why; I didn't go near her——"

We hurried up stairs. The door of the Princess' room was open, the light burning. The Princess sat up in bed, tears rolling down her gross, fat face, screaming at the top of her voice; while beside her, in Phrygian night-cap and pajamas, stood King Constantine.

He had her by the elbow and was jerking her arm and shouting at her: "Shut your fool head! Stop it! There's nothing the matter with you. You've been dreaming!"

Smith went straight to the bed, shoved Constantine aside, and laid a soothing hand on the Princess' shoulder.

"I'm a physician," he said in his pleasant, reassuring voice. "What is the trouble, Princess?"

"There's turrible doin's in this here house!" she bawled. "I peeked through the key-hole! Them there Bolsheviki next door is fixin' to blow us all up. I seen the bomb a-sizzlin' and a-fizzlin' on the floor like it was just ready to bust! And then I run and got into bed and I let out a screech——"

"It's all right," said Smith kindly. "It was just a bad dream. There isn't any bomb. Nobody is going to harm you——"

"I didn't dream it! I——"

"Yes, you did. Calm yourself, Princess. You have eaten something which has disagreed with you."

She ceased her screaming at that suggestion and considered it, the tears still streaming over her features. Then she began to blubber again and shook her head.

"I ain't et hoggish," she insisted. "If I had et hoggish I'd think I drempt it. But I ain't et hoggish. That wasn't no dream. No, sir! I had went to bed, but I was fidgety, like I had a load of coal onto my stummick. And by and by I heard them Bolsheviki next door whisperin'. And by and by I heard a fizzlin' noise like they was makin' highballs in there.

"Thinks I to myself that sounds good if true. So I gets up and I lights up and I peeks through the key hole. And I seen King—I mean Monsieur Xenos, and Monsieur Itchenuff, and Puppsky and Wildkatz and a long, black box on the floor in the room next door, and somethin' sticking out of it which fizzled without smokin'——"

"It was all a dream, madame," interposed Smith soothingly. And to my surprise, he took from his inner breast-pocket a small, flat medicine case.

"A glass of water and two spoons, please," he said to Clelia. And she went away to fetch them.

There was another glass on the wash-stand. In this he rinsed a clinical thermometer and inserted it under the tongue of the sobbing Princess.

Thusis and I stood near him, silent. King Constantine and the Bulgarian Tsar appeared to be unsympathetic and at the same time slightly nervous.

"If she'd stop gorging herself," remarked Tino, "she'd have no nightmares."

"I seen you in there! Yes I did!" retorted the Princess in another access of wrath and fright, the thermometer wagging wildly between her lips. "And I seen you too!" she went on, pointing at King Ferdinand, who stared wildly back at her out of his eyes of an alarmed pig and wrinkled his enormous nose at her.

"Don't tell me I was dreamin'," she added scornfully, "nothing like that."

Clelia came with the two spoons and glass of water; Smith selected a phial, mixed the dose, withdrew the thermometer, shook it, examined it, washed it at the basin, and, returning to his patient, administered a teaspoonful of medicine.

Then, in the other glass, he dissolved a powder, gave her three teaspoonfuls of that, and placed the two glasses on the night table beside her bed.

"If you happen to awake," he said gently, "take a teaspoonful of each. But I think you'll sleep, madame. And in the morning you'll be all right."

He turned on King Constantine and the Tsar so suddenly that they both took impulsive steps backward as though apprehensive of being kicked.

"The Princess needs quiet and rest, gentlemen," said Smith. "Kindly retire."

"Perhaps I'd better sit beside her for a while," began Constantine, but Smith interrupted him:

"I'll call you into consultation if I want you, Monsieur Xenos." His voice had a very slight ring to it; the ex-King of Greece looked at him for a moment, then winced and backed out of the room, followed by King Ferdinand who seemed to be in a hurry and crowded on his heels like an agitated pachyderm.

Clelia, who had remained mute and motionless, looking at Smith all the while, now came toward him. And in the girl's altered face I saw, reflected, deeper emotions than I had supposed her youthful heart could harbor.

"Do you need me?" she asked. "I am at your service."

"Thank you, there is nothing more," said Smith pleasantly. He turned to include Thusis in kindly but unmistakable dismissal.

Clelia gave him a long, slow look of exquisite submission; Thusis sent an odd, irresolute glance at me. As she passed me, following her sister, her lips formed the message: "I wish to see you to-night."

When they had gone Smith shut and locked the door, and with a slight motion to me to accompany him, walked over to the bed, seated himself beside it, and took the fat hand of the Princess Pudelstoff in his as though to test her pulse.

The lady rolled her eyes at us but lay still, her mottled cheeks still glistening with partly dried tears.

"What's on your mind, Princess?" inquired Smith in a soft, caressing voice.

"Hey?" she exclaimed in visible alarm, and evidently preparing to scream again.

"Hush. Don't excite yourself, madame," he said in his pleasant, reassuring way. "There is no occasion for alarm at all."

"Am I a sick woman?" she demanded anxiously. "Is that what you're a-goin' to hand me? Is it?"

"No, you're not physically ill. You have no temperature except as much as might be due to sudden shock."

"I got the scare of my young life all right," she muttered. "Say, Doc, was it a dream? On the level now, was it?"

"Probably——"

"Honest to God?" she insisted.

"Why do you think it was not a dream, Princess?" he asked gently.

"Why? Well, I've run with Rooshians enough to know a infernal machine when I see one. And I never dream plain, that way. I can see that darn thing yet—and hear it! And I can see them men in there all a settin' onto chairs in a circle like, and a-watching that there bomb sizzling. It made a blue light but no smoke and no smell. How could I have drempt all that so plain, Doc?"

"Princess! You're not afraid of me, are you?"

She looked up into his clean-cut, pleasant American face.

"No, I ain't," she said. "You come from God's country"—she suddenly began to beat her pudgy fists on the sheets—"and whyinhell I ever was crazy enough to leave little old Noo York I don't know excep' I was damfoolenough to do it!"

Smith smiled at her: "You sure were some peach," he said, dropping gracefully into the vernacular, "when you played with Nazimova in that Eastside theater."

The Princess flushed all over, and the radiance of her smile transfigured her amazingly.

"Did you see me in them days, Doc?"

"You betcha!"

"Well-f'r-God's-sake!" she gasped in wonder and delight. "Say, you had me fooled, Doc. I understood you was a Norsky—a sort of tree-peddlin' guy. But, thinks I to myself, he looks like a Yank. I says so to my brother, Leo Puppsky——"

"Don't say it to him again, Princess. Or to anybody."

At that the Princess fixed her shrewd little eyes on Smith, shifted them for an instant to me, then resumed her scrutiny of his serene and smiling features.

"What's the idea?" she asked at last.

"I'm going to lay all my cards down for you, Princess,—faces up. I am an American serving in the Italian army."

"The-hell-you-say!" There was a silence that lasted a full minute. Then, suddenly, the Princess began to laugh. Soft, fat chuckles agitated her tremendous bosom; a seismic disturbance seemed to shake her ample bulk beneath the bed-clothes.

"Tabs!" she exclaimed. "You're keepin' tabs on these here down-and-outers! That's what you're a doin' of! Am I right?"

"And what are you doing here in Switzerland, Princess?" he inquired smilingly.

"Say! I'm their goat! Now, do you get me?"

"Not exactly——"

"Well listen. Puppsky's my brother. He was in the suit and cloak business in Noo York before the Rooshian revolution. Then he beat it for Petrograd—workin' for his own pocket same's you and me, Doc; and seein' pickin's—Trotzky bein' a friend of ours, and Lenine a relation. I was in Stockholm fixin' to go to Noo York, when that poor fish, Wildkatz, comes in and talks me into this game. And look at me now, Doc! Here I am financin' this here bunch o' homeless kings, sittin' into a con game, holdin' all the dirty cards they deal me—busted flushes, nigger straights, and all like that! And what," she demanded passionately, "is there in it for me? Tino, he says I'll be a Greek duchess an' rule a island called Naxos!—And, Gawd help me, I fell fur it. And wherethehell is Naxos? And is it as big as Coney Island? Wasn't I the big dill-pickle to stake 'em to a Greek revolution? And me a princess! Sure, I know a Rooshian princess ain't much of a swell, and the Duchy of Naxos looked good to me.

"But the more I mix in with these here kings the wiser I get. Four-flushers is four-flushers wherever you find 'em. And these guys is all alike—old Admiral bushy-whiskers, Bummelzug, General Droly and that sore-eyed little Gizzler!—all want to sell me gold bricks for real money!"

She waved her short, fat arms in furious recollection of her wrongs.

"Say, even the Greek Queen ain't too particular about chousing the long-green outer me! She wants to hand me the order of the Red Chicken!—costs ten thousand plunks! What do you know about that, Doc?"

I don't know whether Smith was as amazed as was I by these revelations in argot. He smiled his kindly, undisturbed smile and patted her hand encouragingly; while from depths long plugged burst the excited recital of the woes of the Pudelstoffs.

"I'm through," she said. "I got enough. And I told 'em so at the meeting after dinner to-night. They talked rough to me, they did. Puppsky, he got riled and tells me I'm no sister of his. And the Greek Queen she was crazy and called me a kike in German. Which upset my dinner.

"Say, Doc, the Gophers and Gas-house gangs ain't one-two-three with this bunch. I'm scared stiff they'll get me—that Ferdie has croaked more guys 'n people know. I'm scared Sophy sticks me. They say she stuck a hat-pin into Tino. You bet she knows how to make that big stiff behave! And she's got a way of lookin' at you!—Me, I quit 'em cold to-night. 'Nothing like that,' says I; 'no revolution in Greece at $250,000 a revolute! No Naxos! No Red Chicken! Me, I'm on my way via Berne, Berlin, Christiania, and Noo York!'"

"You've quarreled with them, Princess?" asked Smith.

"I sure did. Say, I don't have to stand for no rough stuff from Wildkatz neither. We ain't in Petrograd. But, mind you, I don't put it past him to try his dirty tricks on me with bombs!"

"But why——"

"They're like all gun-men! Once in you can't get out, or they'll try to get you. If you've got enough and try to quit peaceable they think you've been bought out. You're a squealer to them."

"You believe they might offer you violence?" I asked, incredulously.

"How do I know? What was they doin' with that bomb? They're sore on me. They know they're gettin' no more dough outen me. They know I've quit and I'm goin' back to God's country."

"But Leo Puppsky is your own brother!" I exclaimed, horrified.

The Princess shrugged her fat shoulders.

"He's a Red, too. Bolsheviks is Bolsheviks. You don't know 'em. You don't know what they done in Rooshia. No boche is bloodier. Call 'em what you like—call 'em all sons of boches—and you won't be wrong."

Her flabby features had grown somber; suddenly a shudder possessed her, and she opened her mouth to scream; but Smith instantly filled the gaping orifice with medicine, and only a coughing fit followed.

To me he said: "Please leave me alone with her now. It will be all right, Michael."

And he turned tenderly to the convulsed Princess and patted her vast back.

XIX

CONFIDENCES

As I walked through the corridor considerably concerned over the statements made to us by this east-side Princess and seriously disturbed by finding myself in the very vortex of this whirlpool of intrigue which every moment seemed to spew up from its dizzying depths new plots and counter-plots, I almost ran into the ex-Queen of Greece.

She was in curl-papers and negligee, standing just outside her door, an electric torch in one hand, a pistol in the other.

"Madame!" I exclaimed, "what in the world is the matter?"

"I don't like this inn," she said. "I consider it a suspicious place."

"Madame!"

"What do I know about your inn?" she demanded insolently, "or about you, either?"

"Madame!"

"You say you are a Chilean. You don't look it. Neither does your friend resemble a Norwegian. If you desire to know my opinion you both look like Yankees!"

"Madame, this is intolerable——"

"Possibly," she interrupted, staring at me out of chilly eyes that fairly glittered. "Possibly, too, I am mistaken. Perhaps your servants, also, unduly arouse suspicion—your pretty housekeeper may really be your housekeeper. The waitress, too, may be a real waitress. This is all quite possible, Monsieur. But I prefer to be prepared for any eventuality in this tavern!"

And she went into her room and shut the door.

The ex-queen's insolence upset me. I was possessed by a furious desire to turn them all out of doors. The prospect of living in the same house with these people for days—perhaps for weeks, seemed unbearable. Surely there must be some way out of the valley!

Down stairs I saw Raoul coming from the front courtyard leading two strange horses attached to a sort of carryall.

"Where on earth did you discover that rig?" I called out to him in the starlight.

"Two guests have just arrived," he replied, laughing.

I hurried out to where he stood.

"Guests!" I repeated. "Where did they come from? Isn't the pass closed?"

"Sealed tight, Monsieur O'Ryan. But when the avalanche fell this vehicle and its passengers were just far enough inside the pass to be caught.

"I understand they've been digging themselves out of the snow all this time. They've just arrived and are in the long hall asking for accommodations."

"Who are they?" I demanded in utter disgust; "more huns?"

"One is a Turkish gentleman," he said. "The other is the driver. I will take care of him. The Turkish traveler's name is Eddin Bey, and he says he's a friend of Admiral Lauterlaus."

I went into the house and discovered Eddin Bey entering his signature on the ledger while Clelia with keys and candle waited beside him to show him to his quarters.

"Ah!" he exclaimed cordially when I named myself, offering his dark, nervous hand, "I am inexpressibly happy to have the privilege, Monsieur O'Ryan! A narrow escape for us, I assure you!—that mountain of snow roaring down on us and our horses whipped to a gallop! Not gay—eh? No, sir! And I thought we'd never dig out the horses and our wagon and luggage!"

I replied politely and suitably, and Clelia presently piloted this dark, lean, vivacious young man to his quarters across the corridor from General von Dungheim.

When she returned her flushed, set features arrested my attention. "Did that Turk annoy you, Clelia?" I asked sharply.

She shrugged: "Tavern gallantry," she replied briefly: "men of that sort are prone to it."

I said: "If any of these people annoy you and Thusis come to me at once."

She laughed: "Dear Monsieur O'Ryan," she said, "Thusis and I know how to take care of ourselves." She came nearer, looking up at me out of her lovely, friendly eyes:

"Thusis is in her room. It isn't very proper, of course, but she is waiting for you. Will you go?"

"Yes."

Clelia laid one hand lightly on my arm, and her smile became wistful and troubled:

"You do care for my sister, don't you?"

"I am deeply in love with her."

"I was afraid so."

"Afraid?"

"Oh, I don't know how Thusis is going to behave,—how she is going to take it!" said Clelia in frank anxiety. "Never before has she cared for any man; and I don't know what she's going to do about you—indeed I don't, Mr. O'Ryan!"

"Could you tell me," said I bluntly, "what obstacles stand in the way of my marrying your sister?"

"Thusis should tell you."

"She isn't already married?"

"Good Heavens, no!"

"Is it a matter of religion?"

"Thusis must tell you. I could not speak for her,—interfere with her. My sister will act for herself—assume all responsibility for whatever she chooses to do.... As I do."

I took Clelia's soft hands in mine and looked earnestly into her face:

"You, also, care for a man; don't you?"

She bent her head in wordless assent.

"What are you going to do about it, Clelia?"

"Whatever he wishes."

"Marry him?"

"If he wishes."

"You are an astounding girl!"

"I am an astounded girl. I never supposed I should take such a view of life, of its obligations, of my own position in the world.... Lately, in the probable imminence of sudden death, I became a little reckless—perhaps excited—willing to learn in these brief hours the more innocent elements of love—curious to experience even the least real of its mysteries—to play coquette in the pretty comedy—even with you——"

She gave me a vague smile and slowly shook her head.

"All the while," she said, "I was in love with him. I didn't know it because I didn't know him. When I felt frivolous and wished to laugh he was serious. His solemnity stirred me to audacity; and when I said a lot of silly things I didn't mean he preached at me; and I bullied him and was impudent and showed my contempt for a man who would endure such tyranny.... That is how it began.... And all the while, not knowing it, I was falling more completely in love. Isn't it odd?"

She smiled, pressed my hands, shook her head as though at a loss to account for her behavior.

"The first hint of it I had," she said, "was when he coolly warned me that he would thwart me. And I looked into his eyes and knew him for the first time—knew him to be the stronger, the wiser, the more capable,—and the more powerful.

"And I realized, all in a moment, that he had endured my contempt and tyranny merely because he chose to; that he was a real man, in cool possession of his own destiny; that, if he chose, he could clear his mind of me, and presently his heart; that I was not essential to him, not necessary; that, indeed, unless I instantly took myself in hand and made an effort to measure up to him, he'd turn from me,—quite courteously—and go his own way with a kindly indifference which suddenly seemed terrifying to me.... And I loved him.... And let him know.... And that is how it happened with me."

After a long pause: "What would happen," I inquired, "if I tried that sort of thing on Thusis?"

Clelia shook her head: "Thusis and I are different. I don't wish to be a martyr."

"Does Thusis?"

"I'm rather afraid she is inclined that way. Of course we both were quite willing to suffer physical martyrdom if we failed to carry off these wretched kings. That is a different kind of martyrdom—a shot in the brain, a knife thrust—perhaps a brutish supplice from the boche——" She shrugged her shoulders. "We were not afraid," she added. "But when another sort of death suddenly confronted me—the death of love in him I loved—I had no courage—none at all. You see I am not the stuff of which martyrs are fashioned, Mr. O'Ryan."

"Is Thusis?"

"Alas!"

"She prefers to suffer?"

"I am afraid she will become a martyr to a pride which interprets for her the old, outworn doggerel of ages dead.... I can't repeat it to you."

"Noblesse oblige?"

"That phrase occurs in it."

"Oh.... So Thusis, caring for me, will send me away," I said.

"I cannot answer you."

"Can you advise me, Clelia?"

She looked up at me; tears sprang to her eyes; she pressed my hands, but shook her head.

XX

A LOCAL STORM

I knocked very gently at Thusis's door and she opened it, signed for me to enter, then closed it cautiously.

"Do you know," said I, "that it is after midnight?"

"I know it is. But as long as others don't know you are here, what does it matter, Michael?"

"Of course," I muttered, "you and I know there's no cause for scandal."

Her delightful laughter welled up from the whitest throat I have ever seen, but she instantly suppressed it.

"We're very indiscreet," she said mockingly; "we've exchanged hearts and we're here in my bedroom at midnight. Can you imagine what that queen downstairs would say?"

"Had you meant to kidnap her, also?" I inquired.

"No," she said scornfully. "The Allies can take care of the Hohenzollern litter after they take the sty."

"Berlin," I nodded.

"Berlin. Hercules had no such task in his Augean stable. It was Hercules, wasn't it, Michael? I always get him and his labors mixed up with Theseus. But the Prince of Argolis used address, not bull force.... His mother's name was Æthra.... My mother's name was Æthra, too."

"That is Greek."

"Very. And the name of the ancient pal—I mean the name of our old house on the island of Naxos was Thalassa!—You remember the Ten Thousand?"

"Yes. Your house overlooked the sea?"

"The Ægean! You enter from the landward lawn, advance toward the portico—and suddenly, through the marble corridor, a sheet of azure! Thalassa!"

I said slowly: "Little white goddess of Naxos with hair like the sun and eyes of Ægean blue, why have you sent for me to come to your chamber at midnight?"

Thusis looked at me and her happy smile faded.

"To ask one question," she said very gravely, "and to answer one—if you ask it."

"Ask yours, first."

"What did that dreadful Princess say to you and to Mr. Smith after I left the room?"

I told her what had passed.

"What!" she cried fiercely, clenching her hands. "Tino had the impudence to offer her Naxos as a bribe!"

"The Duchy of Naxos," I repeated.

I have never seen an angrier or more excited girl. She sprang to her feet and began to pace the bedroom, her hands doubled in fury, her face tense and white.

"Naxos!" she kept repeating in a voice strangled by emotion. "That treacherous Tino offers Naxos to a miserable, fat Russian Princess! Oh! Was ever such an insult offered to any girl! Naxos! My Naxos! Could the civilized world believe it! Can the outrage on Belgium equal such an infamy! Even with the spectacle of martyred France, of Roumania in Teuton chains, of Russia floundering in blood—could the world believe its senses if Naxos is betrayed!"

Her emotion was tragic, yet it seemed to me that the lovely Thusis took Naxos a trifle too seriously. Because I was not at all certain that this same civilized and horrified world was unanimously aware of the existence of Naxos. But I didn't say this to Thusis.

As she paced the room she wrung her hands once or twice naïvely deploring the avalanche.

"Because," she said, halting in front of me, "Smith or no Smith, I should certainly attempt to seize this treacherous, beastly Constantine, and smuggle him over the frontier. The traitor! The double traitor! For Naxos is not his! No! It is a Venetian Duchy. What if Turkey did steal it! What if Greece stole it in turn? It is Venetian. It is Italian. It is my home and I love it! It is my birthplace and I worship it! It is my native land and I adore it!"

"The King of Italy," I reminded her, "does not seem to desire that Naxos be included in his domain."

"But I do!" she said passionately. "I am a Venetian of Naxos. Have I not the right to decide where my island belongs? For six hundred years my family has owed allegiance to Venice—and naturally, therefore, to Italy. Have I not every right to raise the banner of revolt in Naxos and defy this ruffianly ex-king who comes sneaking stealthily into Switzerland to plot for his own restoration?—who comes here secretly to offer Naxos to a vulgar Russian as a bribe for financial aid?—offers to sell my home for a few millions cash and buy cannon and men and send them into Greece to fight for him and his rotten throne?"

"Thusis——"

"No!" she said violently, "there is no argument possible. And God never sent His avalanche to ruin my hopes and destroy all chance of freedom for Naxos! It was the bestial Gott of the boche who loosed the snow up yonder—the filthy fetish of the hun who did that!" She flung out her white arms and looked upward. And "oh!" she cried, "for one hour of the old Greek gods to call on! Oh for the thunderbolts of Zeus!—the spear of Athene!—the tender grace and mercy of Aphrodite, and her swift and flaming vengeance when her temples were profaned!—when her children were betrayed and disinherited!—Naxos—my Naxos——"

All Greek now, pagan, beautiful, the girl's whole body was quivering with rage and grief. And I knew enough to hold my tongue.

While the fierce storm swept her, bending her like a sapling with gusts of passion, I stood silent, awaiting the rain of tears to end it.

None came to break the tension, though the gray eyes harbored lightning and her brow remained dark.

"As Naxos falls, so falls the world," she said. "The eyes of civilization are on her; the fateful writing runs like fire across God's heaven! Let the world heed what passes! The doom of Naxos is the doom of freedom and of man!"

I, personally, had scarcely looked at it in that light. It did not strike me that the hub of civilization rested on Naxos. Nor do I believe the world was under that impression. But I was not going to say so to this excited young Naxosienne—or Naxosoise—or Naxosette,—whichever may be the respectful and properly descriptive nomenclature.

And so, standing near the window, I watched the tempest wax, wane, and gradually pass, leaving her at last silent, seated on her couch, with one arm across her knee and her head bent like the "Resting Hermes."

When I walked over and stood looking down at her she reached out and, without looking, took my hand.

"It is your turn now, Michael; and I already know what question you mean to ask."

"Shall I ask it, Thusis?" After a silence her hand closed convulsively in mine.

"I do love you.... I am not—free—to marry you."

"Could you tell me why?"

She slowly shook her head: "You will learn why, some day."

"Is there no chance, Thusis?"

Again she shook her head. Presently her hand slipped out of mine and she rested both elbows on her knees, covering her face.

I dropped onto the couch near her, framing my own head in both hands.

The world had become sunless and quite empty except for human pain.... And so, thought I in a dull sort of way, this ends my romance with The Laughing Girl.... The Laughing Girl of Naxos..... Not laughing now, but very much subdued, brooding beside me with both hands covering her face, and the splendid masses of her hair now loosened to her shoulders like a hood hiding the bowed features.

"Don't grieve, Thusis," I whispered, forgetting my own pain; but she suddenly huddled up and doubled over, crying:

"If you speak to me that way I—can't—endure it——" Her voice broke childishly for the first time, and I saw her shoulders quiver.

We had a rotten time of it—self-restraint on my side, and on hers—a hard, sharp shower of tears—terrifying to me because of her silence; not a sigh, not a sob, not even one of those undignified gulps which authors never mention—but which nevertheless usually characterize all lachrymose feminine procedure, and punctuate its more attractive silences.

It resembled a natural rainstorm in April—abrupt, thorough; and then the sun. For after considerable blind fumbling, she suddenly leaned forward and dried her eyes with the edge of the bed-sheet.

"There," she said, "is an intimate act which ought to breed mutual contempt!"

We both laughed. She found a fresh section of the sheet and used it.

"You are an adorable boy," she said, keeping her face turned away but busy, now, with her sagging hair.

"It's got to come right some day," I said with the fatuous stupidity characteristic of the stymied swain.

"It won't," she remarked, "but let's pretend it will.... Is my nose red, Michael?"

"I can't see it when you turn your face away."

"I don't wish you to see it if it's red."

"But how can I judge——"

We burst into that freer laughter which welcomes the absurd when hearts are heavy laden.

Her dresser was within reach. I gazed at her back while she powdered her nose.

"My eyes are red," she observed calmly.

"No, they're gray; it's your hair that is red, Thusis."

It was silly enough to invoke the blessed relief of further laughter. But when Thusis finally turned toward me there was a new shyness about her, exquisite, captivating, that held me quiet and very serious.

"What a dreadfully sober gentleman," she said. "The storm's all over, and it isn't going to rain again."

I quoted: "It rains—in my heart——" And she laid a quick, impulsive hand on my arm:

"Have I not confessed that I love you?"

"Yes——"

"Very well. Is it a reason for rain—in your heart or anywhere else?"

"No——"

"Well then! ... You may touch my hand with your lips."

Only her lips could be sweeter than the soft hand I kissed, long and closely, until she withdrew it with a tremulous little laugh of protest.

"We're becoming infamous; we're a scandal, Michael. Have you anything further to say to me? If not, please go home to bed."

Casting about in my mind for an excuse to linger I recollected the advent of Eddin Bey; and I told her about it.

"What a barnyard full!" she said scornfully, "all the creatures, now,—Turk, Bulgarian, Bolshevik, and boche! ... To see them here—and the two principal scoundrels almost within my grasp! I don't believe I can stand it," she added breathlessly. "Smith or no Smith, and his exasperating majesty the King of Italy to the contrary, I think something is going to happen to Tino and Ferdie as soon as the pass is cleared."

"One thing more," I said; "do you believe there really was a bomb in the room next to the Princess Pudelstoff's?"

"Do you mean, Michael, that those murderous Russians might possibly suspect Clelia, Josephine, Raoul, and me?"

"Oh no, I don't think that. But possibly they had other assassinations in mind and were trying out a new species of bomb—experimenting with some untried fuse. That's what occurred to me—unless the fat Princess really did dream it all."

"When I make the beds to-morrow," remarked Thusis, "I shall search very carefully. The only trouble is that those Bolsheviki seldom leave their rooms except to eat. And then I'm obliged to wait on table."

I nodded, a little troubled. But it was unthinkable that these treacherous Reds should even dream of bomb-murder in Switzerland. Whom might they desire to slaughter, unless it were the poor, fat Princess? And they would scarcely blow up an entire establishment in a neutral country for the purpose of scattering portions of the Princess over the adjacent Alps.

And yet I began to feel oddly uneasy, now. Of what such vermin might be capable I could not guess, with the frightful example of the two arch-traitors Lenine and Trotzky staring a sickened world in the face,—a world already betrayed twice since its sad history began—once by Judas, once by Benedict Arnold.

Judas would have sold the souls of all mankind: Lenine and Trotzky sold only one hundred and fifty million bodies to the anti-Christ. Things were improving on earth after all.

I said: "Smith is a good man to have here at such a time. He's a wonderfully level-headed fellow. I don't believe we need worry."

"I ought to dislike him. But I don't," remarked Thusis.

"Dislike Smith?"

"He's turned my sister's head!"

"But—good heavens!—if she cares for him——"

"I care for you!" she cut in crisply. "But I haven't lost my head or my sense of proportion——"

"I wish you had."

She looked at me in silence almost hostile. Suddenly she blushed furiously:

"I wish I had, too! I care for you as much as my sister cares for Mr. Smith! More! Much more! I'm—I'm quite hopelessly in love! But I don't—don't—forget that—that——"

She shook her head but sat looking at me out of tragic eyes—suffered me to press her lovely hands to my lips, watching me all the while.

"You had better go, Michael."

I laid her hands in her lap. She clasped them so tightly that the delicate nails whitened.

"It will come out right," said I, rising.

"It never will.... I—I love you."

At the door I hesitated. But she did not speak. And I opened it and went out.

XXI

SUS SCROFA

For two exasperating weeks, now, the Schwindlewald pass had remained hermetically sealed with snow, utterly isolating the valley. It is true that a Swiss airplane had appeared overhead and had dropped several tons of bread which we did not require, and a message couched in hysterical language reminding us that God would protect us while several score of sweating Swiss dug us out.

Personally I didn't care except for the highly objectionable colony of boches with whom I was obliged to share an imprisonment which otherwise would never have bored me.

But the royal circus was a dreadful visitation—kings, queen, lesser fry, and Bolsheviki became almost unendurable, even when, during the first week of our captivity, they flocked by themselves and conspired to their hearts' content.

Had this condition endured, the situation might have been borne with a certain philosophy. But the inevitable, of course, happened: one week of exclusive gregariousness was enough for these people: they began to bore one another.

It showed first, characteristically, at table. Tino and spouse, always engaged in continual bickering to the vast discomfort of everybody, now had it out in star-chamber proceedings; and the King, badly battered but jaunty, appeared at table with one eye partly closed and a mouth so swollen that he could not comfortably manipulate a cigarette. He explained that he had bumped his head in the dark. But it was perfectly understood who had bumped it.

King Ferdinand became moody, and his cunning, furtive features often bore a white, scared expression. He developed, too, a morbid mania for a most depressing line of conversation—celebrated assassinations being his theme,—and he ransacked the history of all times in search of examples, Eddin Bey slyly assisting him.

Sluggish livers and piggish feeding probably accounted for the sullen lethargy of Von Dungheim and Bummelzug. Their ever latent and brutal tempers blazed at absurd trifles, involving usually the bad manners and lack of respect shown them by the Bolsheviki, who chattered back at them like enraged monkeys, terrifying the Princess Pudelstoff who had never forgotten her "dream."

Admiral Lauterlaus, whose personal habits were always impossible, now spent most of his time bullying the wretched Secretary Gizzler or, with a telescope such as chamois-hunters carry, squatted on the veranda steps and swept the Bec de l'Empereur for "gamps," and heaven knows what else.

Only the Countess Manntrapp and Eddin Bey appeared to retain their good humor. The Turk, a handsome fellow of distinguished manners and gay address, evidently possessed a lively eye for pulchritude. He lost no time at all in paying his sly court to my servants, beginning with Thusis, progressing to Clelia, and ending with Josephine Vannis in the kitchen: and he accepted defeat with such cheerful and humorous alacrity that they all forgave him, I think, and his perfectly frank suggestions that they return to Adrianople with him and honor him by becoming the nucleus for a zenana.

He found, however, a pretty bird of his own vivacious and volatile temperament in the exceedingly bored Countess Manntrapp. And they were often together and apparently having a jolly flirtation, being cleverly aware of each other's character and entertaining no delusions.

Except for these two at table and on the veranda, and except for the companionship of Smith, and now and then an opportunity for a few cautious words with Thusis, those days would have been insupportable for me. A hungry hun is bad enough; an ill-tempered one is worse; but a bored boche!—imagine a penful of them with time heavy on their hoofs!

The old story—"What's time to a hawg!"—has no significance among the Sus scrofa or the "Bosch Vark." Bored, the embers of that dull, slumbering rage glow hotter; the sulky silence is broken by grumbling, then by quarrels; the blind, senseless instinct to brutalize and rend obsesses. Small wonder the boche desires a place in the sun where his herds can spread out from the constricted and common wallow!

Tino had again appeared at luncheon with the other eye done in thunderous tints of purple, taupe, and an exquisite mauve. Parallel scratches adorned his nose; some of his mustache was missing. But I must admit he took it jauntily enough, and his bland explanation—something about tripping over a rock in the woods—was accepted by all and believed by none.

The queen, still somewhat pasty and pinched from the effects of this ritual in camera, ate haughtily, disdainful of what anybody might really think, and calm in her conviction that the Hohenzollern is responsible to Gott alone for whatever a Hohenzollern may choose to do.

That she had done plenty to Tino was painfully visible: but he was in a jocose and waggish humor, and his barrack-room quips and jests were plainer than usual. In fact, they became so coarse that even the Admiral bristled his beard and eyebrows, sniffing lack of respect for himself in the loud-mouthed levity of the King.

And I was getting madder and madder, Thusis and Clelia being present to wait on table as usual, and I was on the point of making a sharp observation to King Tino, when a sudden burst of applause from the other end of the table checked me. The Countess Manntrapp was speaking. She continued:

"This enforced imprisonment is becoming exceedingly dull for everybody. Why not divert ourselves? Has anybody any suggestions to offer?"

"A mountain party," rumbled Admiral Lauterlaus. "I, in my time, a famous hunter of 'gamps' have been."

"We don't wish to break our necks to divert ourselves," sneered the queen.

"A fishing party!" exclaimed Von Dungheim. "If there is a good big net we can all help draw it and clean out every trout in the stream!"

"Droly," expostulated Tino, "you have such wholesale ideas! Our host might possibly object, you know."

At the very idea of anybody objecting to the destructive wishes of a Prussian officer, General Count von Dungheim glared at me.

"Why not give a baby-party?" inquired Smith, blandly.

"A—a baby-party!" repeated Baron Bummelzug vacantly, in English; "what perhaps iss it a baby-party?"

Thusis, serving me, bent over and whispered in my ear: "Not the sort of baby-parties they gave in Belgium; there are no babies." And she moved serenely to serve the queen, her beautiful face placid and inscrutable.

The Princess Pudelstoff began to clap her pudgy hands excitedly:

"A baby-party! A baby-party! That'll be fun! That'll be great! And we'll have a feed and a spiel——"

"Ach wass!" shouted the Admiral exasperated. "Tell us once what it iss a baby-party, und stop your noises yet!"

But the excited Princess had become uncontrollable, and she began to hammer on the table with her fat fists, shouting:

"A feed and a spiel! For God's sake somebody start something in this hellofa hole!"

Amid her clamor and the ominous roaring of the infuriated Admiral, I tinkled my goblet with my fork and presently secured comparative silence for Smith.

In a few pleasant phrases he explained to them the simple intricacies of the American baby-party.

"I'll come!" cried the Countess Manntrapp, delighted.

"I also!" echoed Eddin Bey.

Tino was visibly enchanted at the prospect, and he clapped King Ferdinand on his elephantine back exultingly:

"We'll go as twins!" he cried. "This is most agreeable to me! Eh, Sophy? I'm half dead for a bit of a frolic! Everybody must come. Nobody is to be excused. Desperate cases require desperate remedies. Ennui is what is killing us; diversion is what we need!"

He was pounding the breath out of King Ferdinand who began to cough and dodge and blink wildly at everybody out of his little wild-pig's eyes, when I stood up giving the signal.

"The party," announced Smith, "is for to-night! There will be games, a dance, and a supper. All are politely invited!"

"My God," said Secretary Gizzler to me, rubbing his bony hands together, "to what foolishness does noble company resort in order that ennui may be escaped."

The Princess Pudelstoff overheard him:

"Crape-hanger!" she said, giving him a vigorous dig in the ribs which almost disarticulated his entire and bony frame.

The majority, however, trooping out to the veranda where they could teutonically enjoy their coffee and cognac "im grünen," appeared desirous of engaging in the proposed diversion.

Even the queen deigned to inquire of me whether there was, in the house, material with which to construct a pair of ruffled panties for her husband.

Only the Bolsheviki remained aloof, chattering and mouthing together and waving their soiled fingers at each other and, presumably, at the bourgeois world in general.

Later, Smith came into my room whither I had retired to resume my series of poems to Thusis,—a rather melancholy occupation yet oddly comforting, too.

"Why the devil," said I, "did you suggest such a party?"

"I don't know. It occurred to me. I'm rather tired of their wrangling."

"But a baby-party!"

He laughed: "You see how they take to the idea. Anything to dissipate this sullen, ugly atmosphere. It gets on my nerves."

"Are you going?"

"Certainly."

"In costume?"

"Of course."

"Good heavens, Smith! I didn't think you had it in you to frivol."

"Why—I don't know," he said, smilingly. "I'm intensely happy."

I eyed him gloomily: "Yes," said I, "no doubt you are—winning the affections of the girl you wish to marry. By the way, has she been civil enough to tell you who she really is?"

"No," he replied cheerfully.

"Do you mean to tell me you are engaged to marry a girl who refuses to disclose her identity?"

"Exactly."

"How the devil is she going to marry you? Under an assumed name?"

"That is for Clelia to decide."

"That," said I, "is a most remarkable view to take of the situation."

"Why? I am in love. I dare believe she cares for me. It makes no difference to me who Clelia may be. That she is Clelia is enough—enough that she will be my wife. And when a man stands for the first time inside the gates of happiness with the girl he loves—what an ass he'd be to bother her about details!"

This was a totally new and unexpected Smith, to me. I never dreamed it was in him.

"Don't you agree with me?" he inquired.

I nodded doubtfully.

"Wouldn't you accept Thusis as she chose to offer herself?" he insisted.

A pang shot through me:

"Good Lord, yes!" I said. "I'd marry her if she were a beggar or a convict or the least creature of her sex. I'd never ask a question; I'd take thankfully and happily what she offered. You are right, Smith—wonderfully right. If you love, love! If you don't, worry!"

"Quite right," he said; "it's either love or worry; the genuine article doesn't admit of both. If you really love you are satisfied; if you worry it isn't love—it's merely something resembling it. Love is specific; there are sub-species and varieties, none the real thing. The acid test of love is contentment; baser metal dissolves in trouble, and the sediment is worry. I——"

"Oh, shut up!" I burst out, nervously; "you're too darned eloquent on the subject. Besides," I added with a perfectly new and instinctive suspicion, "you're so confoundedly contented with yourself that I believe you have begun to guess the identity of Clelia, and that it pleases you enormously!"

He reddened.

"Have you any idea who she is?" I insisted.

"A vague idea."

"And that vague idea pleases you?"

"It does," he said with a shy sort of grin.

That was too much for me. "Go to Guinea!" said I, resuming my pen and paper and paying him no further attention.

Clelia came for orders, sweet and serious in her garb of service. Again I laid aside my poem to Thusis.

"I am glad," said I, camouflaging my melancholy with a sprightly allure, "that you have renounced kidnaping kings and have decided to kidnap Mr. Smith instead."

She didn't seem to think it was funny. The newly engaged lack humor.

"Josephine," she said with dignity, "suggests this supper-card." And she handed me the written sheet.

"Fine!" said I. "Stuff 'em till they're unconscious and we'll have peace."

At that she laughed.

"Josephine desires to know what time the party is to begin," she said.

"It begins with dinner, Clelia. They all come in costume. After dinner they play games. Supper at midnight. Then they dance—God help them."

"The Bolsheviki, too?"

"That's another breed of cat," said I. "I haven't the faintest idea what they intend to do. All I know is that they're not coming to the party. So give them a table by themselves in their rooms half an hour before we dine. Otherwise those chattering apes are likely to spoil the party."

She agreed with me.

After she had departed I began again on my poem called "Nobody Home":

"She who, risen from the sea,—

Body fashioned from its foam,—

Once appeared to favor me,

Now has left me all alone:—

When I call she's not at home;

Silent are the Temple closes

Where her priestess used to roam

Smiling at me, crowned with roses

Underneath the Temple's dome;

So I stand outside alone.

From the dead fire on her altar

Now I turn away and falter:

Aphrodite's not at home.

Goddess born of sun and sea,

Goddess born of sea and sun,

Blue-eyed Venus pity me,

I would wed my Dearest One:—

She denies; and I'm undone!"—

Just here I found myself in difficulties: the verse called for two more words to rhyme with "sun," and the available ones already unused included such words as bun, dun, fun, gun, hun, nun, pun, run, shun, ton, and won—at least these were all I could think of—none among them available for classical purposes.

Much disturbed I sat consulting my Rhyming Dictionary and smoking a cigarette without relish, when a terrific screaming from the Princess Pudelstoff's apartment brought me to my feet and out into the corridor.

The Princess stood in the hallway wringing her hands and almost dancing with rage and fright while, from their doorway across the hall, Puppsky and Wildkatz jabbered at her in apparent fury.

"What the dickens is all this!" I demanded angrily.

"They've got cooties!" she screamed. "I suspected it! I knew it! All Bolsheviki have 'em! Don't let 'em near me! Lock 'em up and turn the gas on! Make 'em take baths! They don't want to, but make 'em!"

"What do you mean?" said I, feeling suddenly ill and pale.

"I mean what I say!" she cried, wringing her jeweled hands. "They've got 'em but we don't have to have 'em! We ain't in the trenches, thank God! No, nor we ain't in Rooshia where them things is family pets! I d-don't want any! I don't want any even from my own brother——"

I strode over to Puppsky and Wildkatz.

"Get into that room or I'll knock your heads off!" I whispered in an ungovernable rage.

They began to chatter at me but thought better of it and fled; and I tore the key from their door and locked it on the outside. Then I went downstairs and out to the stable where I found Raoul and gave him the key.

"You will take a couple of gallons of sheep-dip," said I, still in a cold fury, "and you will go up and fill their bathtub with it, and then you may call me."

"Oh," said Raoul, coolly comprehending, "I can souse them myself, Monsieur."

"Tell them I'll beat them to death if they stir until I permit it," I added. "Also be good enough to burn their clothing and bedding, and fumigate their rooms."

"Give yourself no anxiety, Monsieur," he said, amused.

XXII

PARTICEPS CRIMINIS

Toward the dinner hour excitement in the house became intense as the royal circus fussed and pinned and basted and struggled with its impromptu costumes.

Bells jangled to summon Thusis and Clelia; the Princess Pudelstoff was too fat to braid her own hair; the Countess Manntrapp required basting into her boy's breeches; the Queen, desiring to go as the infant Germania, had pasted tin-foil all over her high Austrian corset, but still it didn't resemble armor, nor did the oval boiler-lid furnished by Josephine Vannis particularly resemble a shield.

Otherwise a blonde wig of tow in two obese braids and a shiny fireman's helmet of 1840 which I discovered in the garret, consoled the queen. To these properties I rashly added an eel-spear; and then, remembering her quick temper, I feared for King Constantine, wondering whether, if fatally prodded, he would name me as accessory after the fact.

As for the men, they continually rang for Raoul who acted as dresser and as messenger between them and Josephine Vannis who had constructed their costumes from odd scraps and from such of their own garments as would serve.

Admiral Lauterlaus was monstrous as a sailor-boy of six; Von Bummelzug, Eddin Bey, Von Dungheim, and Secretary Gizzler were school-lads in socks, bare knees, and denim blouses. King Constantine who, it appeared, rather fancied his own legs, went as a smirking doll in a costume principally constructed out of his wife's underclothes.

But the most gruesome sight of all was Ferdinand as a youthful ballet-girl; and he most horridly resembled an elephant on his hind legs in a stick-out tulle skirt, and his enormous feet, cross-ribboned, went shuffling and flapping to and fro as he waddled about busy with powder and rouge.

Raoul laced his stays and tugged in vain to indent his bulk. It was useless, but we got him into his corsage and left him before a mirror ponderously prancing in imitation of the pony ballet, and singing la-la-la! furtively peeping the while at his own proportions with the unfeigned pleasure of perfect approval.

Really, except for the characters of these impossible individuals, the jolly noise and confusion they made with their preparations and the lively excitement that pervaded hall, corridor and stair, resembled the same sort of delightful uproar one hears at a week-end party in a big country house under similar circumstances.

The queen's bell had been jangling persistently for some minutes when, stepping from my room into the hallway to see whether anybody was answering it, I came face to face with Thusis.

Warm, and delicately flushed with her exertions, she was half vexed, half laughing now as she cast a prudent glance right and left along the corridor before slipping through the door into my room. I followed, locking the door.

"Michael," she began, "the queen says there are not enough women in the party and she insists that Clelia and I find costumes and join. I was furious—and she's making a violent row about it now, insisting, bullying, ordering Clelia about——"

"What! Ordering my servants about!" I interrupted angrily.

"Yes—your servants, Michael," dropping me an ironical curtsey which brought me back to my senses. We both laughed. And suddenly it occurred to me how adorable Thusis would be at a baby-party.

"Why not?" I exclaimed. "Why not drop hostilities for an hour and enjoy the ridiculous? Absurdity always appeals to you, anyway, Thusis," I added, "and the entire situation is so impossible that it ought to attract you!"

"It does," she admitted with that engaging and reckless little laugh I had come to know so well. "Besides, you are my host, Michael, and I am under your roof. So who your ragamuffin-bobtail guests may be does not concern me. Clelia and I are not responsible, are we?"

"Not at all," said I. "The ignominy of this royal riff-raff rests upon my shoulders. Anyway, you do not need to dance except with me," I added reassuringly.

"Eddin Bey is rather attractive," she mused, letting her glance rest on me sideways while the innocent pleasure of this discovery parted her lips in a honeyed smile.

"All right," said I shortly, "dance with him!"

"Michael——"

"Go ahead and dance with him," I repeated, stabbed by the most ignoble of emotions.

"What an absolute boy you can be," she said. "If I do this thing at all it is because the tension of months is becoming unendurable. Reaction from the tragic usually lands one on the edges of the grotesque.... If you had been a girl, Michael, always sheltered, secure, living a colorless restricted life, and if you suddenly were cast upon your own feet with the accumulated responsibility of your race on your shoulders,—and if, in the very middle of your first years of liberty and opportunity you suddenly found this wonderful world flaming like hell all about you, and all its inhabitants at each other's throats, and all delight in living turned to hate and fear—and if you concluded to take your fate into your own hands and run away from authority, and, in your own way, fight the good fight for God and King and Country,—and if the strain became, for an hour, too great—wouldn't you react—perhaps to the verge of folly?"

"You bet I would, sweetness," said I, taking her lovely hands in mine.

"I was a school-girl," she said, "when—it devolved upon me, and upon Clelia, to determine our own futures.... The loss of parents is a—bewildering thing.... Our mania was travel and education to fit us for—for what we considered to be our rightful future positions in the world.... We have been in your country,—I don't mean Chile. We know England and France—God bless them both. Then, owing deference anyway if not perhaps blind obedience to the—to a—gentleman in Italy——"

"The King," I said soberly.

"Yes, the King of Italy. We were expected to return to Rome and defer to him all questions concerning our future.... And we ran away."

"Why, Thusis?"

"Because we happen to have minds of our own, Michael."

"And you immediately employed them by concocting a plot to kidnap some kings!" I said. "Oh, Thusis, you are the limit!"

"I know I am," she said naïvely. "A mind that does not range to its extremest limits is a rather dull one, isn't it?"

"It is," I admitted, laughing and crushing her hands between my own. "You are delightfully right, Thusis; you are always deliciously right. I don't know who you are except that you're the lovely and mysterious Laughing Girl. What else you may be I don't know, dearest, but you are doubtless somebody or the King of Italy wouldn't bother his clever head about you and your sister."

"He does bother, I am afraid," admitted Thusis, smiling. "I'm sorry we've been obliged to annoy him. But it couldn't be helped, because we differed, politically, with the King of Italy. And we ran away from Rome to prove to him that our conception of world-politics was right and his was wrong. And we expect him, some day, to be very grateful to us—because we really are, Clelia and I, two of his most loyal subjects."

She spoke so frankly, so earnestly, that I dared make no jest of what she said.

However, I think she saw a glimmer in my eyes, for she flushed.

"Nothing," she said, "is sacred to a Yankee. Let me go."

"Shall I tell you what is sacred to a Yankee, Thusis?" said I, retaining her hands.

"No!"

"I'll tell you all the same: liberty of mind!—liberty within law!—liberty within the frontiers of conscience."

"Then you do not deny these privileges to me?"

"They are yours, Thusis. No man can deny essential rights and liberties."

"You believe I have a right to act as my conscience dictates?"

"Absolutely."

"To run away from authority?"

"If your mind approves."

"And—and devote my life—risk it—to free my native land and restore to my sovereign what once belonged to him?"

"Naxos?"

"Yes."

I said gravely: "If, in your self-dedication to this work there be no ulterior motive;—if you undertake this unselfishly, and with a heart clean of all personal ambition—then, Thusis, I say, go on! ... And I am at your service."

Twice she started to speak, and hesitated. In her clear eyes, so intently, almost painfully fixed on mine, I saw she was fiercely pondering my words. Her intense and youthful seriousness in her concentration held me fascinated. And for a little while neither one of us stirred.

And it gradually began to appear to me that what I had said to her had suddenly opened to her young and ardent eyes a totally new view of some things in the world with which she had, perhaps, believed herself thoroughly familiar.

She turned from her absorption; and now she was presented to me in profile with downcast eyes and bitten lip, and a least relaxation of her slender figure which had been so straight and rigid.

It was becoming evident that she had nothing further to say to me,—no reply to make to what I had rather ponderously propounded as an ethical axiom.

But, as responding to the restless pressure, I released her hands, she turned back and stood looking at me out of painfully perplexed eyes—eyes that lacked no courage, either, yet doubted, now, almost wistfully.

Then, not speaking, she unlocked my door and went out.

Smith knocked at the doorway communicating between our apartments, and came in at my absent-minded invitation.

"Of course you're not in this, are you, Michael?" he inquired.

"We weren't asked. Besides, there are too many men now, and the Queen wants Thusis, Clelia, and Josephine Vannis to serve dinner in costume and join the party afterward."

"Are they going to do it?" he asked, surprised and amused.

"I don't know.... Tell me, Smith, whom do you suspect Thusis to be? I can see you have some theory concerning Clelia—some idea. Haven't you?"

"Yes, I have."

"Would you care to share it with me?"

"Yes. But I can't."

"Could you tell me why you can't?"

"I think I may tell you that much. The King of Italy requested me to maintain silence in the possible event of my discovering the identity of Thusis and Clelia. I am here on the King's service, with certain definite orders. I shall scrupulously observe these orders. Among these is his request concerning the identity of these two charming young girls."

"Just one thing, then. Have you discovered the identity of Thusis?"

"No."

"Of Clelia?"

He reddened. "Yes, I have," he said. "Or rather she has confirmed what I had begun to suspect."

"Clelia has told you who she is!" I exclaimed.

"She has."

"Isn't that disobedience of orders?"

"She told me before I could stop her. I never dreamed she was going to tell me. It came out—like a bolt of lightning—while I—I was—slipping over her finger that ring I used to wear——"

"She wears it!"

"Yes. She was glorious. She——"

"And she's going to marry you?"

"Yes, God bless her."

So I wrung his hand in silence and strove hard not to let any comparison of his situation and mine taint with the slightest trace of bitterness my happiness in his good fortune and my cordial recognition of it now.

Thusis was not mentioned between us. He didn't say "buck up, old chap," or "go in and win," or any insincere thing of that sort, for I felt that he believed my case to be hopeless.

Presently he returned to his room and closed the door. And I sat down at my table and produced pen and paper with a view to further poetry—my only form of relief from grief.

But rhymes evaded me; and finally I gave it up and rested my head on both hands, unhappy, unsatisfied, feeling that I was a failure, and always had been one.

After all what could such a glorious young thing as Thusis see in an interior decorator from New York?—a profession into which had minced all the lady-like young men and lisping sissies in Manhattan!

Perhaps, after all, the profession was all right, but the people who practiced it were weird and incompetent. And as for me I was perfectly aware that I had no taste, no color sense, no glimmering idea of composition.

Doubtless my artistic and financial success had been due to my utter incapacity.

I proceeded to masticate the cud of bitterness.

I had been masticating longer than I realized for the light in the room was already growing less when a knock came at my door; and I shoved my unuttered verses into the drawer and grunted out, "Come in!"

It was Thusis, transfigured, sparkling, mischievous, audacious. And she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

Her magnificent ruddy hair, unloosened, framed her face, its upcurled, burnished ends falling to her waist.

Otherwise she was an exquisite French doll in knee-skirts and sash and all over pale blue ribbons.

"I'm going to have a good time if I do murder to-morrow, Michael. Do you like my costume? Really? That is so sweet of you! You always are the most satisfactory of men! And you should see Clelia! She's like me only her ribbons and sash are primrose. She is really charming."