that is why we have kept our independence. Ay,
kept it, although hemmed in with false friends and open enemies."

Reist spoke with fervour, a fire in his dark eyes, a note of passion
vibrating in his slow tones. The girl especially watched him with keen
interest. To her all this was new and incredible. She was used to men
to whom self-restraint was amongst the cardinal virtues, to the
patriotism of torchlight processions and fire-crackers. This was all
so different, it was as though some one had turned back for her the
pages of history.... Reist surely was not of this generation? Erlito
had averted his face, Hassen was busy lighting a cigarette, Mr. Van
Decht was as bewildered as his daughter. Yet Reist's words, in a way,
had moved all of them. It was Hassen who answered.

"If the Republican instinct," he remarked, quietly, "is as yet unborn
in Theos, whence the banishment of the Tyrnaus family, and the
establishment of a Republican government?"

Reist turned full upon him, and his eyes were like the eyes of an
angry lion.

"Maurice of Tyrnaus," he said, "was one of the degenerates of a noble
race. I say no more against one whom, if alive, I should still
acknowledge as my King."

Hassen shrugged his shoulders.

"You are a long way from Theos, Count," he remarked, pointedly. "You
took, I presume, the oath of allegiance to the Republic when it was
formed?"

"That is a false saying," Reist answered, scornfully. "I neither took
the oath nor recognized the government."

"Yet they allowed you to remain in the capital city?" Hassen asked.

"There was no one," Reist answered, "who would have dared to bid me
depart. Of the ancient nobility of Theos we alone remain, alas, close
dwellers in our native country. Else Metzger had been hung in the
market-place with short shrift--he a merchant, a trafficker in coin,
who dared to sit in the ancient Council House of Theos and weave his
cursed treason. And listen, sir," he continued, turning abruptly upon
Hassen. "You would know whence sprang that evil weed of a Republic! I
will tell you. It was the work of foreign spies working with foreign
gold amongst the outcasts and scum of Theos. It was not the choice of
the people. It was the word of sedition, of cunning bribery, the vile
underhand efforts of foreign politicians seeking to weaken by
treachery a country they dared not, small though it is, provoke to
battle."

There followed a strange, tense silence. No one thought of
i