ort Prince Zastrow as elective candidate
for the vacant throne.

The Revolutionary leaders had been sounded on the subject, and were
found strongly in favour of the scheme. It meant a return to the ancient
principle of elected monarchy, and Prince Zastrow, though now a German
ruling prince, represented the union of two of the oldest and noblest
families in Russia and Poland. Moreover, he had pledged himself to a
Constitution which, without going to Radical or Socialistic extremes,
embodied all that the moderate and responsible adherents of the
Revolutionary cause desired or considered suitable for the people in
their present stage of political development--which, of course, meant
everything that Oscar Oscarovitch did not want.

After dinner they went out through the long French windows on to a
verandah which overlooked a vast sea of forest, lying dark and seemingly
limitless under the fading daylight and the radiance of the brightening
moon. Since their marriage day the Prince had made it a bargain that
whenever they dined _en famille_, his wife should prepare his coffee
with her own hands. She even roasted the berries and ground them
herself, and, as many a time before, she did it to-night in the
seclusion of the little room set apart for that and similar purposes.
She was alone in the physical sense, for the two watching Presences were
invisible to her, and so, for all she knew, no one saw her measure
twenty drops of a colourless fluid from a little blue bottle into the
coronetted cup of almost transparent porcelain which had been one of her
wedding presents to her husband.

After a couple of cups of coffee and half a dozen half-smoked
cigarettes, the Prince stretched his long legs out, struggled with a
yawn, and said in a sleepy voice:

"My Princess, you must ask our guests to excuse me. I am tired after the
long day in the sun; and so, if I may, I will go to bed."

He rose, and the rest rose at the same moment. He bowed his good-night,
and the two saluted. The Princess followed him into the dining-room.

The unseen watchers stood by the end of the great heavily-hung bed, in
the midst of which lay Prince Zastrow, seemingly sinking into the
slumber of death. Von Kessner leaned over and raised an eyelid, and said
to the Princess, who was standing on the other side, the single word:
"Unconscious." She bent forward for a moment as though she were bidding
a silent farewell to the man to whom she had pledged her maid