he former
seemed to have turned paler. The sun was warm, and yet he shivered.

"Just what do you mean by that, Prince?" he asked.

"You shall walk with me to my house, and I will tell you," was the quiet
reply.

CHAPTER XXV

"I suppose," Immelan suggested, as the two men reached the house in
Curzon Street, "it would be useless to ask you to break your custom and
lunch with me at the Ritz or at the club?"

His companion smiled deprecatingly.

"I have adopted so many of your western customs," he said
apologetically. "To this lunching or dining in public, however, I shall
never accustom myself."

Immelan laughed good-naturedly. The conversation of the two men on their
way from the Park had been without significance, and some part of his
earlier nervousness seemed to be leaving him.

"We all have our foibles," he admitted. "One of mine is to have a pretty
woman opposite me when I lunch or dine, music somewhere in the distance,
a little sentiment, a little promise, perhaps."

"It is not artistic," Prince Shan pronounced calmly. "It is not when the
wine mounts to the head, and the sense of feeding fills the body, that
men speak best of the things that lie near their hearts. Still, we will
let that pass. Each of us is made differently. There is another thing,
Immelan, which I have to say to you."

They passed into the reception room, with its shining floor, its
marvellous rugs, its silken hangings, and its great vases of flowers.
Prince Shan led his companion into a recess, where the light failed to
penetrate so completely as into the rest of the apartment. A wide
settee, piled with cushions, protruded from the wall in semicircular
shape. In front of it was a round ebony table, upon which stood a great
yellow bowl filled with lilies. Prince Shan gave an order to one of the
servants who had followed them into the room and threw himself at full
length among the cushions, his head resting upon his hand, his face
turned towards his guest.

"They will bring you the aperitif of which you are so fond," he said,
"also cigarettes. Mine, I know, are too strong for you."

"They taste too much of opium," Immelan remarked.

Prince Shan's eyes grew dreamy as he gazed through a little cloud of
odorous smoke.

"There is opium in them," he admitted. "Believe me, they are very
wonderful, but I agree with you that they are not for the ordinary
person."

The soft-footed butler presented a silver tray, upon which repose