to-night to ask
Monsieur Poluski to be good enough to give me money to take me to
Warsaw."

"I think," said Alec, smiling, "he promised you, in my name, the
wherewithal to buy a cafe."

"I fear I did not earn my reward, your Majesty," stuttered the other.

"Are cafes dear in Warsaw?" said the King, unlocking a drawer and
producing roubles to the equivalent of five hundred dollars. "Here, this
sum should give you a fresh start in life. All I ask in return is that
you shall keep a still tongue about your recent share in local events."

Poor Sobieski's gratitude grew incoherent, especially when the King
handed him over to the care of the attendant who had brought him to the
bureau, with instructions that he was to be taken to the railway station
and safeguarded there till the departure of the next train that crossed
the frontier.

By that time the dinner hour was long past. Alec was disinclined for a
heavy meal; so he went to his private suite, where he changed his
clothes, contenting himself with some sandwiches, which he ate in a
hurry and washed down with a glass of red wine.

Coming down stairs about an hour later, he passed the smoking-room. The
door was open, and he saw that the men had already ended dinner. He was
about to enter the music salon, to which his mother and Joan usually
retired with the President's wife and daughter, when he met Pauline for
the second time, and the Frenchwoman now approached him with the same
marked nervousness in her demeanor that he had noticed when he saw her
standing in the lobby.

"May I have a word with your Majesty in private?" she asked.

He was surprised; but again he believed she was probably bringing a
message from Joan. He threw open the door of his office. "Come in here,"
he said. "What is it?"

She held out a letter, and he saw that her hand shook. "Mademoiselle
asked me to give you this, your Majesty," she said. "I was to take care
that you were alone when you received it."

"Something important then," he said with a laugh.

Crossing the room to the table on which stood the lamp by whose light he
had scribbled "Alexis R." on the papers intrusted to Bosko, he opened
the envelop, which bore in Joan's handwriting the simple superscription,
"Alec," and began to read:

MY DEAR ONE:--When Pauline gives you this, I shall have left you
forever. I am going from Delgratz, and I shall never see you again.
I cannot marry you--but oh, my dear, my dear, I