we depart from the Greek
standard. Your Whistler never achieved fame until he stopped reproducing
bits of nature and devoted his superb talent to caricature."

"Caricature! Whistler!" she repeated.

"Name of a good little gray man! what else? Not portraits, surely? Wise
that he was, he left those to the snapshot photographer; for even the
camera can be given the artistic kink by the toucher-up. Have you
forgotten, then, the rage of a stolid Englishman when he saw his wife as
Whistler painted her? Oh, yes, art lies outrageously and lives long,
like other fables."

"But Whistler might have been bluntly accurate, a thing that is not
always pleasing. For instance," and here her voice sank a little, "it
might not be altogether gratifying to my pride if some one was to
analyze mercilessly the precise reasons of my present journey."

"_Tiens!_ Let us do it. It will serve to pass the time."

She laughed and blushed. "Wait a little. We have many hours before us."

"You will never have a more appreciative audience, if only you could
make your voice heard above this din."

"What are you driving at? Please tell me."

"You have seen the two people sitting over there?" and he twisted
eyebrows and mouth awry, with a whimsical leer of caution.

"Yes; what of them?"

"Do you know them?"

"No."

"Not even the lady?"

"She reminds me of some one--why do you ask?"

"I am surprised at you, Joan. Those charming eyes of yours should be
keener. True, there is nothing feminine about Alec, and he has not
suffered, like his mother. Still, there is a resemblance."

"Felix, are you in earnest?"

"Absolutely. I, at least, have not the Greek temperament. Our friends
across the gangway are none other than Prince and Princess Michael
Delgrado. You will discover no prophecy of Alec in his father; but he is
his mother's own son, despite her weak chin and air of resignation."

Joan was dismayed, utterly astonished; the color ebbed from her cheeks.
"Are they going to Delgratz?" she almost whispered.

"I suppose so. It is one of the oddest things about our lives how they
run in grooves. Just now all the tiny furrows of our separate existences
are converging on the Danube. We are like ships foredoomed to collision,
that hurry remorselessly from the ends of the earth to the preordained
crash."

"Oh, Felix, if you knew of this why did you bring me here?"

"Who am I to resist when the gods beckon? I love you, Joan, and I hate
Kings; b