cloud of
tobacco smoke up towards the ceiling. "Nita has been very useful. She
has been as faithful, too, as is possible for a woman."

Li Wen bowed and waited. He knew better than to interrupt.

"It was through the information which Nita brought me," his master went
on, "that I have been able to check the truth of Immelan's statement as
to the French dispositions and the _rapprochement_ with Italy. Nita has
served me very well indeed. What she has done in this matter, she has
done in a moment of caprice."

"My lord," Li Wen ventured, "a woman is of no account in the plans of
the greatest. She is like a leaf blown hither or thither on the winds of
love or jealousy. She may be used, but she must be discarded."

"It is a strange world, this western world," Prince Shan mused. "In our
own country, Li Wen, we plot or we fight, we build the great places,
climb to the lofty heights, and when we rest we pluck flowers, and women
are our flowers. But here, while one builds, the women are there; while
one climbs, the women are in the way. They jostle the thoughts, they
disturb the emotions, not only of the poet and the pleasure seeker, but
of the man who hews his way upwards to the goal he seeks. And it is very
deliberate, Li Wen. An Englishman eats and drinks in public and places
opposite him a flower he has plucked or hopes to pluck. He drugs himself
deliberately. Half the time when he should be soaring in his thoughts,
he descends of deliberate intent. Instead of his flower, he makes his
woman the partner of his grossness."

"The master speaks," Li Wen murmured. "But what of the woman? She awaits
your pleasure."

"I shall hear what she has to say," Prince Shan decided.

Walking backwards as nimbly as a cat, his head drooped, his hands in
front of him, Li Wen left his master's presence. A moment later he
reappeared, ushering in La Belle Nita. Prince Shan waved him away. The
girl came slowly forward, pale and trembling, smouldering fires in her
narrow eyes. Not a muscle of Prince Shan's face moved. He watched her
approach in silence. She sank on to the floor by the side of his chair.

"What is my master's will?" she asked.

Prince Shan looked downwards at her, and she began to tremble again.
There was nothing threatening in his eyes, nothing menacing in his
expression. Nevertheless, she felt the chill of death.

"You have done me many good and faithful services, Nita," he said. "What
evil spirit has put it into your b