s out from the dining room."

He saw the hardening of her lips, the flash in her eyes at the mention
of Somerfield's name.

"Yes!" she continued, "Sir Charles and I are going to have a little
understanding."

"Are you sure," he asked softly, "that it will not be a
misunderstanding?"

She looked into his face.

"What does it matter to you?" she asked. "What do you care?"

"Come into the conservatory for a few minutes," he begged. "You know
that I take no wine and I prefer not to return into the dining room. I
would like so much instead to talk to you before you see Sir Charles."

She hesitated. He stood by her side patiently waiting.

"Remember," he said, "that I am a somewhat privileged person just now.
My days here are numbered, you see."

She turned toward the conservatories.

"Very well," she said, "I must be like every one else, I suppose, and
spoil you. How dare you come and make us all so fond of you that we look
upon your departure almost as a tragedy!"

He smiled.

"Indeed," he declared, "there is a note of tragedy even in these
simplest accidents of life. I have been very happy amongst you all, Miss
Penelope. You have been so much kinder to me than I have deserved. You
have thrown a bridge across the gulf which separates us people of alien
tongues and alien manners. Life has been a pleasant thing for me here."

"Why do you go so soon?" she whispered.

"Miss Penelope," he answered, "to those others who ask me that question,
I shall say that my mission is over, that my report has been sent to my
Emperor, and that there is nothing left for me to do but to follow it
home. I could add, and it would be true, that there is very much work
for me still to accomplish in my own country. To you alone I am going to
say something else."

She was no longer pale. Her eyes were filled with an exceedingly soft
light. She leaned towards him, and her face shone as the face of a woman
who prays that she may hear the one thing in life a woman craves to hear
from the lips she loves best.

"Go on," she murmured.

"I want to ask you, Miss Penelope," he continued, "whether you remember
the day when you paid a visit to my house?"

"Very well," she answered.

"I was showing you a casket," he went on.

She gripped his arm.

"Don't!" she begged. "Don't, I can't bear any more of that. You don't
know how horrible it seems to me! You don't know--what fears I have
had!"

He looked away from her.

"I have sometime