question would take too long to answer, Miss Oppner!"

"I demand an answer! Who are you?"

"That is another question," replied the stranger, in his soft, musical
voice, "and I will try to answer it. At dinner last night I told you of
a man whose fathers saw the Great Pyramid built, whose race was old when
that pyramid was new. I told you of an unbroken line of kings--of kings
who wore no crowns, whose throne was lost in the long ago."

She closed and re-opened her right hand nervously, and a new light came
into her eyes. His words had touched again, as the night before, the
hidden deeps of her nature, quickening into life the mysticism that lay
there. She would have spoken, but he quietly motioned her to
silence--and she was silent.

"I said that the time approached when that ancient line again should
claim place among the monarchies of the world. I said that millions of
men and women, in every habitable quarter of the globe, owed allegiance
to that man who was, by divine right, their king!"

His face lighted up with a wild enthusiasm. To the beautiful girl who
listened, spell-bound, he seemed as one inspired.

"Upon his people lay a cloud--a tainting shadow grown black through the
centuries. He must disperse it, proclaiming to the world that his was a
noble people, a nation with a mighty soul! The evil came not from
without but from within. The worst enemies of the Jews are the Jews. In
attacking those enemies of his people, inevitably he would come into
collision with many governments. But he would do them no wrong, save in
showing them powerless to protect the traitors from his righteous
wrath!"

For a long moment she watched him, and no words came to her. That this
splendid man was mad flashed through her mind as a possible thing; but
that thought she dismissed, and remained bewildered.

"Is it true?" she asked, in a pleading voice; "or are you jesting with
me?"

He smiled, having resumed his habitual calm.

"It is true!" he answered. "Upon the word of a rogue--a thief--upon the
honour of Severac Bablon!"

Zoe started, yet she was not afraid; for something had told her almost
from his entrance that this was he--the man whose name at that very hour
glared from countless placards, upon a great part of the civilised
world; whose deeds at that moment were being babbled of in every tongue
from Chinese to Italian.

"But, if you are that man, and----" She hesitated. "You are wrong, I am
sure! Oh! indeed, tru