re must be so gratifying. Another distant relative, isn't she?"

"Very. She is in Petrograd."

That too was evocative. Cassy began talking about the biggest cropper
that history has beheld--a tsar tossed from the saddle to Siberia!

Paliser, glad to be rid of Mrs. Beamish, took it up. The sordid story of
the Russian chief of staff, bought by Hindenburg and shot by the
Grand-Duke Nicholas, whom the tsar then exiled, was told once more.

"What else could you expect of that Hun?" Paliser concluded.

"A Hun!" Cassy exclaimed. "Why he is a Romanov."

"No more than you are," Paliser replied. "The last of the Romanovs
married Catherine the Greater. There the breed ended. Paul, who followed
and who married a German drab, was Catherine's son but not her
husband's. The rest of the litter, down to the father of the recent
incumbent, all married German drabs. The father of the ex-tsar married a
Dane. The fellow is therefore one-eighth Dane and seven-eighths Hun.
Totally apart from which, a grocer who knew his business would not have
had him for clerk. His family knew that and, before he had time to be
tsar, tried to poison him. To the misfortune, not of Russia merely, but
of Christendom, they failed. If they had succeeded the eastern front
would be secure. As for his wife, I saw her once. It was in the Winter
Palace which, before it was sacked, was a palace. Since the palace of
the Caliphs of Cordova crumbled, there has never been a palace like it.
It outshone them all. Well, that woman tarnished it."

Meanwhile dishes were brought and removed by servants, wooden-faced, yet
with ears alert. The subject of elopements had seemed promising, but it
led to nothing. At their own table, talk was gayer.

Cassy enjoyed the food, the diluted wine, Paliser's facile touch. He
appeared to know a lot and she surprised herself by so telling him. "I
wish I did," she added. "I am ignorant as a carp."

"You know how to charm," he replied. But, seeing her stiffen, he
resumed, "With your voice. That is enough. It would be a mistake for you
to be versatile. Versatility is for the amateur. The artist is a flower,
never a bouquet."

It was decently said. In the decency of it, the agreeable insult which a
compliment usually is was so chastened that Cassy flushed and felt that
she had. It annoyed her, and she attributed it to the wine.

It was not the wine. Other influences were at work on this girl, born to
a forsaken purple and whose soul was