the Yang-tse-kiang and the Yenisei; he had climbed
mountains in Abyssinia, in Siam, in Thibet and Afghanistan; he had shot
big game in more than one jungle, and had been shot at by small brown
men in more than one forest, to say nothing of the little encounters he
had had in most un-Occidental towns and cities. He had seen women in
Morocco and Egypt and Persia and--But it is a waste of time to
enumerate. Strange to say, he was now drifting back toward the
civilisation which we are pleased to call our own, with a sense of
genuine disappointment in his heart. He had found no sign of Romance.

Adventure in plenty, but Romance--ah, the fairy princesses were in the
story books, after all.

Here he was, twenty-six years old, strong and full of the fire of life,
convincing himself that there was nothing for him to do but to drift
back to dear old New York and talk to his father about going into the
offices; to let his mother tell him over and over again of the nice
girls she knew who did not have to be rescued from ogres and all that
sort of thing in order to settle down to domestic obsolescence; to tell
his sister and all of their mutual friends the whole truth and nothing
but the truth concerning his adventures in the wilds, and to feel that
the friends, at least, were predestined to look upon him as a fearless
liar, nothing more.

For twenty days he had travelled by caravan across the Persian uplands,
through Herat, and Meshed and Bokhara, striking off with his guide alone
toward the Sea of Aral and the eastern shores of the Caspian, thence
through the Ural foothills to the old Roman highway that led down into
the sweet green valleys of a land he had thought of as nothing more than
the creation of a hairbrained fictionist.

Somewhere out in the shimmering east he had learned, to his honest
amazement, that there was such a land as Graustark. At first he would
not believe. But the English bank in Meshed assured him that he would
come to it if he travelled long enough and far enough into the north and
west and if he were not afraid of the hardships that most men abhor. The
dying spirit of Romance flamed up in his heart; his blood grew quick
again and eager. He would not go home until he had sought out this land
of fair women and sweet tradition. And so he traversed the wild and
dangerous Tartar roads for days and days, like the knights of
Scheherazade in the times of old, and came at last to the gates of
Edelweiss.

Not