st time in his life he
wondered whether a thousand guineas was, after all, such a magnificent
fee!

Almost at the same time the Prince sat back in the shadows of the
Duchess of Devenham's box at the Opera and talked quietly to Lady Grace.

"But tell me, Prince," she begged, "I know that you are glad to go home,
but won't you really miss this a little,--the music, the life, all these
things that make up existence here? Your own country is wonderful, I
know, but it has not progressed so far, has it?"

He shook his head.

"I think," he said, "that the portion of our education which we have
most grievously neglected is the development of our recreations. But
then you must remember that we are to a certain extent without that
craving for amusement which makes these things necessary for you others.
We are perhaps too serious in my country, Lady Grace. We lack altogether
that delightful air of irresponsibility with which you Londoners seem to
make your effortless way through life."

She was a little perplexed.

"I don't believe," she said, "that in your heart you approve of us at
all."

"Do not say that, Lady Grace," he begged. "It is simply that I have
been brought up in so different a school. This sort of thing is very
wonderful, and I shall surely miss it. Yet nowadays the world is being
linked together in marvellous fashion. Tokio and London are closer today
than ever they have been in the world's history."

"And our people?" she asked. "Do you really think that our people are so
far apart? Between you and me, for instance," she added, meaning to
ask the question naturally enough, but suddenly losing confidence and
looking away from him,--"between you and me there seems no radical
difference of race. You might almost be an Englishman--not one of these
men of fashion, of course, but a statesman or a man of letters, some one
who had taken hold of the serious side of life."

"You pay me a very delightful compliment," he murmured.

"Please repay me, then, by being candid," she answered. "Consider for
a moment that I am a typical English girl, and tell me whether I am so
very different from the Japanese women of your own class?"

He hesitated for a moment. The question was not without its
embarrassments.

"Men," he said, "are very much the same, all the world over. They are
like the coarse grass which grows everywhere. But the flowers, you know,
are different in every country."

Lady Grace sighed. Perhaps she h