t my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very much as
a monk bows, from the waist. If he had only crossed his hands flat on
his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don't know why, something
moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the room, leaving
me suddenly impressed, not only with him but with myself too. I had my
door closed to everybody else that afternoon and the Prince came with a
very proper sorrowful face, but five minutes after he got into the room
he was laughing as usual, made the whole little house ring with it. You
know his big, irresistible laugh. . . ."

"No," said Mills, a little abruptly, "I have never seen him."

"No," she said, surprised, "and yet you . . . "

"I understand," interrupted Mills. "All this is purely accidental. You
must know that I am a solitary man of books but with a secret taste for
adventure which somehow came out; surprising even me."

She listened with that enigmatic, still, under the eyelids glance, and a
friendly turn of the head.

"I know you for a frank and loyal gentleman. . . Adventure--and books?
Ah, the books! Haven't I turned stacks of them over! Haven't I? . . ."

"Yes," murmured Mills. "That's what one does."

She put out her hand and laid it lightly on Mills' sleeve.

"Listen, I don't need to justify myself, but if I had known a single
woman in the world, if I had only had the opportunity to observe a single
one of them, I would have been perhaps on my guard. But you know I
hadn't. The only woman I had anything to do with was myself, and they
say that one can't know oneself. It never entered my head to be on my
guard against his warmth and his terrible obviousness. You and he were
the only two, infinitely different, people, who didn't approach me as if
I had been a precious object in a collection, an ivory carving or a piece
of Chinese porcelain. That's why I have kept you in my memory so well.
Oh! you were not obvious! As to him--I soon learned to regret I was not
some object, some beautiful, carved object of bone or bronze; a rare
piece of porcelain, _pate dure_, not _pate tendre_. A pretty specimen."

"Rare, yes. Even unique," said Mills, looking at her steadily with a
smile. "But don't try to depreciate yourself. You were never pretty.
You are not pretty. You are worse."

Her narrow eyes had a mischievous gleam. "Do you find such sayings in
your books?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact I have," said M