what should I gain? I am not like a child who
robs an insect of life for a few moments' amusement. Even if I have no
conscience, it gives me no pleasure to be wanton. Besides, the young man
is, in his way, a splendid work of art. Why should I be vandal enough to
destroy it? I shall ask you another question."

The prince slowly sipped the wine from the glass that he was holding to
his lips. Then he set it down deliberately.

"Why not?"

"What is your interest? Is it a bet, a whim, or--enmity?"

"You may count it the latter," the prince replied deliberately.

Calavera laughed softly to herself.

"Now, for the first time," she confessed, "I feel interest. This is
where one realizes that we live in the most impossible age of all
history. The great noble who seeks to destroy the poor young man from
the country is powerless to wreak harm upon him. You can neither make
him a pauper nor have him beaten to death. Why are there princes any
longer, I wonder? You are only as other men."

"It is an unhappy reflection, but it is the truth," the prince admitted.
"My ancestors would have disposed of this young man as I should a
troublesome fly, and it would have cost them no more than a few silver
pieces and a cask of wine. To-day, alas, conditions are different. It
will cost me more."

She trifled for a moment with the salad upon her plate, which as yet she
had scarcely tasted.

"I am feeling," she remarked, "magnificently Oriental--like Cleopatra.
The sensation pleases me. We are bargaining, are we not--"

"We shall not bargain," the prince interrupted softly. "It is you who
shall name your price."

She raised her eyes and dropped them again.

"The prince has spoken," she murmured.

He touched her fingers for a moment with his, as if to seal their
compact; then he turned once more to the lady upon his left.

Seyre House was one of the few mansions in London which boasted a
banqueting-hall as well as a picture-gallery. Although the long table
was laid for forty guests, it still seemed, with its shaded lights and
its profusion of flowers, like an oasis of color in the middle of the
huge, somberly lighted apartment. The penny illustrated papers, whose
contributors know more of the doings of London society than anybody
else, always hinted in mysterious terms at the saturnalian character of
the prince's supper parties. John, who had heard a few whispers
beforehand, and whose interest in his surroundings was keen and inten