nny."

They drew their chairs about the great hearth, in which the idiotic
little Viennese plaster animals sported in movement eternally arrested,
and talked of the years that had passed. Paul explained once more his
loss of Jane and his fruitless efforts to find her.

"We didn't know," said Jane. "We thought that either you were dead or
had forgotten us--or had grown too big a man for us."

"Axing your pardon," said Barney Bill, taking his blackened clay from
his lips and holding it between his gnarled fingers, "you said so. I
didn't. I always held that, if he wasn't dead, the time would come
when, as it was to-night, the three of us would be sitting round
together. I maintained," he added solemnly after a puff or two, "that
his heart was in the right place. I'm a broken-down old crock, no
longer a pagan; but I'm right. Ain't I, sonny?" He thrust an arm into
the ribs of Paul, who was sitting between them.

Paul looked at Jane. "I think this proves it."

She returned his look steadily. "I own I was wrong. But a woman only
proves herself to be right by always insisting that she is wrong."

"My dear Jane," cried Paul. "Since when have you become so
psychological?"

"Gorblime," said Barney Bill, "what in thunder's that?"

"I know," said Jane. "You"--to Paul--"were good enough to begin my
education. I've tried since to go on with it."

"It's nothing to do with edication," said Barney Bill. "It's fac's.
Let's have fac's. Jane and I have been tramping the same old high-road,
but you've been climbing mountains--yer and yer gold cigarette cases.
Let's hear about it."

So Paul told his story, and as he told it, it seemed to him, in its
improbability, more like a fairy-tale than the sober happenings of real
life.

"You've said nothing about the princess," Jane remarked, when he had
ended.

"The princess?"

"Yes. Where does she come in?"

"The Princess Zobraska is a friend of my employers."

"But you and she are great friends," Jane persisted quietly. "That's
obvious to anybody. I was standing quite close when you helped her into
the motor car."

"I didn't see you."

"I took care you didn't. She looks charming."

"Most princesses are charming--when they've no particular reason to be
otherwise," said Paul. "It is their metier--their profession."

There was a little silence. Jane, cheek on hand, looked thoughtfully
into the fire. Barney Bill knocked' the ashes out of his pipe and
thrust it in his pocket. "I