ad I am to see
you, and yet how dangerous it is. Why do you go on filling all the
newspapers in Europe with your letters from Theos, and your praises of
the King? You have made enemies here. You are even now being sought
for."

He smiled grimly.

"I thought that I must be becoming unpopular," he said. "People are
so anxious to find me that they send bullets--mostly very badly aimed
ones--after me in the street. I do not understand it."

She shuddered and glanced nervously around her. The window by which
they sat was commanded by another in the eastward wing of the house.
She looked at it for a moment, and her eyes were full of fear once
more.

"Even now," she murmured, "I believe that we are being watched. Look,
do you see anything?"

He stood by her side, but the window was empty enough. Below, the
square and streets beyond were strangely empty. A sense of desolation
brooded over the place.

"I see nothing," he answered. "I really don't think that we need alarm
ourselves."

She drew him away to the lounge heaped with furs and drawn up to the
fire. An easel was standing in one corner of the room, and behind a
piano. The walls were hung with water-colours and sketches, and the
air was fragrant with the odour of burning logs. Beyond was an inner
apartment.

"You are the first man, except Nicholas my brother," she said, "who
has ever been in here. Remember that, please, and be very obedient.
You will do all that I tell you. Will you promise?"

"Blindly," he answered, "if you will ask me nothing impossible."

"I shall not do that. I am going to ask you something for your own
good. You must leave off writing those letters to the English
newspapers."

He was suddenly very quiet and still. But he turned and looked at her.

"Why?"

"Because it is for your safety, for the good of Theos, and because it
is my wish."

"Your wish--and whose else?"

"My brother's."

There was a moment's silence. She saw signs of a new sternness about
the closely-drawn lips, the steel-grey eyes, from which a momentary
tenderness seemed to have vanished.

"It is true, then, what I hear," he said, slowly. "Your brother has
deserted the King?"

The change in her mood matched his. She drew herself up and looked at
him with flashing eyes and uplifted head.

"My brother will not continue his allegiance to a sovereign who
proposes to raise a tradesman's daughter to the throne of Theos, and
who has offered an insult to our family.