me."

"Of course we will," she answered. "My aunt goes nowhere, but the
Duchess will bring me, I am sure. Ask her when I am there, and we can
agree about the day."

He leaned a little towards her.

"Tomorrow?" he whispered.

She nodded. There were three engagements for the next day of which she
took no heed.

"Tomorrow," she said. "Come and let us arrange it with the Duchess."

Prince Maiyo left Devenham House to find the stars paling in the
sky, and the light of an April dawn breaking through the black clouds
eastwards. He dismissed his electric brougham with a little wave of
the hand, and turned to walk to his house in St. James's Square. As he
walked, he bared his head. After the long hours of artificially heated
rooms, there was something particularly soothing about the fresh
sweetness of the early spring morning. There was something, it seemed
to him, which reminded him, however faintly, of the mornings in his own
land,--the perfume of the flowers from the window-boxes, perhaps, the
absence of that hideous roar of traffic, or the faint aromatic scent
from the lime trees in the Park, heavy from recent rain. It was the
quietest hour of the twenty-four,--the hour almost of dawn. The night
wayfarers had passed away, the great army of toilers as yet slumbered.
One sad-eyed woman stumbled against him as he walked slowly up
Piccadilly. He lifted his hat with an involuntary gesture, and her laugh
changed into a sob. He turned round, and emptied his pockets of silver
into her hand, hurrying away quickly that his eyes might not dwell upon
her face.

"A coward always," he murmured to himself, a little wearily, for he knew
where his weakness lay,--an invincible repugnance to the ugly things
of life. As he passed on, however, his spirits rose again. He caught a
breath of lilac scent from a closed florist's shop. He looked up to the
skies, over the housetops, faintly blue, growing clearer every moment.
Almost he fancied that he looked again into the eyes of this strange
girl, recalled her unexpected yet delightful frankness, which to him,
with his love of abstract truth, was, after all, so fascinating. Oh,
there was much to be said for this Western world!--much to be said for
those whose part it was to live in it! Yet, never so much as during
that brief night walk through the silent streets, did he realize how
absolutely unfitted he was to be even a temporary sojourner in this vast
city. What would they say of him if th