at which was not only impossible but utterly unheroic. And the minutes
were flying. He would remind her that time does not wait even for Kings,
nor would the Orient Express delay its departure by a single second to
oblige such a fledgling potentate as he.

"We must part now, my sweet," he would say. "I am going to demand my
birthright. When I am admittedly a King, I shall send for you. If you do
not answer, I shall become my own envoy. You will make a beautiful
Queen, Joan. You and I together will raise Kosnovia from the mire of
centuries."

Somewhat stilted lovemaking this; but what was a poor fellow to do who
had been taken from the Rue Boissiere and plunged into empire making,
all in the course of a summer's evening?

He crossed the Pont Neuf without ever a look at Henri Quatre. That was a
pity. The sarcastic Bearnais grin might have revealed some of the
pitfalls that lay ahead. At any rate, the King of Navarre could have
given him many instances of a woman's fickleness--and fickleness was the
ugly word that leaped into Alec's puzzled brain when an ancient dame at
Joan's lodgings told him that Mademoiselle and her maid had gone away
that afternoon.

"Gone! Gone where?" he asked blankly.

"It is necessary to write," said Madame, and shut the door in his face,
since it is forbidden in the Quartier for good looking and unknown young
men to make such urgent inquiries concerning the whereabouts of discreet
young women like Mademoiselle Joan.

Leontine, still scrubbing, came to the rescue. Never had she seen any
one so distinguished as this Monsieur. _Mon Dieu!_ but it was a pity
that the belle Americaine should have packed her boxes that very day!
And diminutive Leontine was romantic to the tips of her stubby fingers.

"M'sieu'? wishes to know where he will find the young lady who lives
there?" said she archly, jerking her head and a broom handle toward the
neighboring house.

"But yes, my pretty one," cried Alec.

"Well, Pauline said--Pauline is her domestic, see you--said they were
going to the forest to paint."

"To Fontainebleau?"

"Perhaps, m'sieu'--to the forest, that was it."

"No name? Barbizon?"

"It might be. I have no head for those big words, m'sieu'."

Alec gave her a five-franc piece. It was the first coin he found in his
pocket, and the sight of it caused a frown. Confound those Montmartre
playwrights! Why was their stupid travesty constantly recurring to his
mind? He frowned again, this t