of the
Princess Davorska."

Here Blake made a murmur of impatience. "Oh, Billy, don't!" he said.
"It's so frightfully banal."

McCutcheon took his cigar from his mouth. "The woman who disappeared on
the eve of her marriage?"

"Yes," broke in Blake, "disappeared on the eve of her marriage to elope
with some poet or painter, and set society by the ears. Thoroughly
modern and banal!"

The young diplomat glanced up once more.

"I don't think there's any suggestion of a lover."

"Fact is more potent than suggestion, Billy. Of course there is a lover.
Princesses don't disappear alone."

"You're a Socialist, Ned." Billy's eyes returned to his paper. "Like all
good Socialists, crammed to the neck with class bigotry. Nobody is such
an individualist as the man who advocates equality!"

Blake smiled. "That seems to sound all right," he said; "but it doesn't
remove the lover."

The good-humored scepticism at last forced a way to Billy's
susceptibilities.

"Look here," he said, crossly, "if hearing's not believing, perhaps
seeing is! Look at these pictures; they're not particularly modern or
banal."

He held out his paper, but Blake shook his head.

"No! No, Billy, not for me. If it was some little Rumanian gypsy who had
run away from her tribe I'd take her to my heart and welcome. But a
Princess Davorska--no!"

At this point McCutcheon stretched out his long arm and took the paper
from Billy's hand. "Let's have a squint!" he said. "Lover or no lover,
she must be a bit wide awake." And, curling himself up again, he began
to read from the paper, in a monotonous murmuring voice: "'_The
Princess, as well as being a woman of artistic accomplishments, is an
ardent sportswoman, having in her early girlhood hunted and shot with
keen zest on her father's estates. The above picture shows her at the
age of seventeen, carrying a gun_.' By the Lord, she is wide awake!" he
added, by way of comment. "She is wide awake carrying that gun, but I'd
lay my money on the second picture. Say, Billy, she looks a queen in her
court finery!"

But here real disgust crossed Blake's face. "Oh, that'll do, Mac! Give
us peace about the woman. I'm sick to death of all such nonsense. We're
due in a couple of hours. I think I'll try for forty winks." He threw
away his cigar and tucked his rug about him.

McCutcheon glanced at him, and, seeing that he was in earnest, handed
the paper back to Billy.

"Thanks, Mac!" Blake murmured. "Sorry if I w