ix-foot goddess for the first time--gazed
with pleasurable awe upon this young super-creature with the sea-blue
eyes and golden hair and a skin of roses and cream.

"Fancy, Palla!" she said, "I came immediately back from Stockholm, but
you had sailed on the _Elsinore_, and I was obliged to wait!--Oh!--"
catching sight of Estridge as he advanced--"I am so very happy to see
you again!"--giving him her big, exquisitely sculptured hand. "Except
for Mr. Brisson, we are quite complete in our little company of
death!" She laughed her healthy, undisturbed defiance of that human
enemy as she named him, gazed rapturously at Palla, acknowledged
Shotwell's presentation in her hearty, engaging way, then turned
laughingly to Estridge:

"The world whirls like a wheel in a squirrel cage which we all
tread:--only to find ourselves together after travelling many, many
miles at top speed!... Are you well, John Estridge?"

"Fairly," he laughed, "but nobody except the immortals could ever be
as well as you, Ilse Westgard!"

She laughed in sheer exuberance of her own physical vigour: "Only that
old and toothless nemesis of Loki can slay me, John Estridge!" And, to
Palla: "I had some slight trouble in Stockholm. Fancy!--a little
shrimp of a man approached me on the street one evening when there
chanced to be nobody near.

"And the first I knew he was mouthing and grinning and saying to me in
Russian: 'I know you, hired mercenary of the aristocrats!--I know
you!--big white battle horse that carried the bloody war-god!'

"I was too astonished, my dear; I merely gazed upon this small and
agitated toad, who continued to run alongside and grimace and pull
funny faces at me. He appeared to be furious, and he said some very
vile things to me.

"I was disgusted and walked faster, and he had to run. And all the
while he was squealing at me: 'I know you! You keep out of America, do
you hear? If you sail on that steamer, we follow you and kill you! You
hear it what I say? We kill! Kill! Kill!----'"

She threw up her superb head and laughed:

"Can you see him--this insect--Palla!--so small and hairy, with crazy
eyes like little sparks among the furry whiskers!--and running,
running at heel, underfoot, one side and then the other, and squealing
'Kill! Kill? Kill'----"

She had made them see the picture and they all laughed.

"But all the same," she added, turning to Estridge, "from that evening
I became conscious that people were watching me