he middle of the feast an urgent message arrived for the enamoured
one, summoning him to his home. When he had gone the others started
plying poor Madge with drinks. She was very fond of drinks. They
had splendid fun. Then one of the guests--he was an old lover of
Madge's--suggested--Good-bye to the old days and the rest of it!"

"But what did he think of his friends?" asked Geoffrey. "It seems a
low-down sort of trick."

"He was very sore about it at the time," said Lady Cynthia; "but
afterwards he understood that they were heroes, real theatre heroes."

"It looks like rain," said Geoffrey, uneasily.

So they turned back, talking about London people.

The first drops fell as they were passing through the wicket gate; and
they entered the house during a roar of thunder. Reggie was alone.

"I see that my fate is sealed," he said, as he rose to meet them.
"'The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes!'"

CHAPTER XIX

YAE SMITH

_Nusubito wo
Toraete mireba
Waga ko nari_.

The thief--
When I caught him and looked
at him,
Lo! My own child!

A week of very hard work began for Reggie. The Ambassador
was reporting home on every imaginable subject from political
assassination to the manufacture of celluloid. This was part of Lady
Cynthia's scheme. She was determined to throw Yae Smith and Geoffrey
Barrington together all the time, and to risk the consequences.

So Yae though she had her room at the hotel, became an inmate of
Reggie's villa. She took all her meals there, and her siesta during
most of the afternoons. She even passed whole nights with Reggie;
and their relations could no longer be a secret even to Geoffrey's
laborious discretion.

This knowledge troubled him; for the presence of lovers, and the
shadows cast by their intimacies are always disquieting even to the
purest minds. But Geoffrey felt that it was no business of his;
and that Reggie and Yae being what they were, it would be useless
hypocrisy for him to censure their pleasures.

Meanwhile, Asako was writing to him, bewailing her loneliness. So
one morning at breakfast he announced that he must be getting back to
Tokyo. A cloud passed over Yae's face.

"Not yet, big captain," she expostulated; "I want to take you right to
the far end of the lake where the bears live."

"Very well," agreed Geoffrey, "to-morrow morning early, then; for the
next day I really must go."

He wrote to Asako a long letter wit