I'm doing this and I have no treaty with
Galavia," replied the gentleman pleasantly. "Hit her up a bit, McGuire."

He took one of the hands that lay wearily in Cara's lap and she did not
withdraw it. She only lay back in the leather upholstery and said
nothing. Finally he bent nearer.

"Dearest," he said. There was no answer.

"Dearest," he whispered again.

She only turned her head and smiled forgiveness.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm so tired--so tired of all of it," she sighed. "Don't you see?
I wish someone bigger than I am would take me away to a place where they
had never heard of a throne--somewhere beyond the Milky Way."

He took her in his arms, and the spangle-crowned gipsy head fell heavily
on his shoulder. She stretched up both arms towards the stars, and the
moonlight glinted from her gilt bracelets.

"Somewhere beyond the Milky Way," she murmured, then collapsed like a
tired child and lay still.

"Dearest," he whispered, "I'll tell you a secret." He paused and
listened to the rhythmic cylinders throbbing a racing pulse; he looked
back at the white band of road that was being flung out behind them like
thread from a falling spool. He held her fiercely to him and kissed her.
"I'll tell you a secret. You are being stolen. The _Isis_ is waiting in
a little cove, and there is steam in her engines, and a chaplain on
board. If it's necessary I shall run up the skull and cross-bones at her
masthead. Do you hear?" Then, with a less piratical voice: "Dearest, I
love you."

She looked up drowsily into his eyes. "You don't have to be such a
boa-constrictor," she suggested. "You are not a cave-man, after all, you
know, if you _are_ taking a lady without asking her." Then she
contentedly whispered: "I'm going to sleep." And she did.

As the car at last swept around a curve and took the shore road, Benton
caught, far away as yet, the red and green glint of tiny port and
starboard lights on the bridge of the _Isis_, and the long ruby and
emerald shafts quivering beneath in the calm waters of the bay. In the
light of a low moon, swinging down the midnight sky, the trim silhouette
of the yacht stood out boldly.

Cara, after sleeping through the rowboat stage of the journey, awoke on
the deck of the _Isis_ and gazed wonderingly about. In her ears was the
sound of anchor chains upon the capstan.

"Is it a dream?" she asked.

"It is a dream to me, but I am going to make it real," he responded.