no answer. She watched him with a great and growing curiosity.

"Prince," she said, "they tell me that you are a great student of
history."

"I have read what is known of the history of most of the countries of
the world," he admitted.

"There have been men," she persisted, "who have dealt in empires for the
price of a woman's smile."

"Such men have loved," he said, "as I love."

"Yet for you life has always been a great and lofty thing," she reminded
him. "You could not stand where you do if you had not realised the
beauty and wonder of sacrifice. Fate has given the peace of the world
into your keeping. You will not juggle with the trust?"

He rose to his feet. A servant stood almost immediately at the open
door.

"Fate and an American engineer," he remarked with a smile. "I thank you,
dear lady, for your visit. You will hear my news before I leave."

She looked into his eyes for a moment.

"It is a great decision," she said, "which rests with you!"

CHAPTER XXIV

An hour or so later, Prince Shan left his house in Curzon Street and,
followed at a discreet distance by two members of his household,
strolled into the Park. It had pleased him that morning to conform
rigorously to the mode of dress adopted by the fashionable citizens of
the country which he was visiting. Few people, without the closest
observation, would have taken him for anything but a well-turned-out,
exceedingly handsome and distinguished-looking Englishman. He carried
himself with a faint air of aloofness, as though he moved amongst scenes
in which he had no actual concern, as though he were living, in thought
at any rate, in some other world. The morning was brilliantly sunny, and
both the promenade and the Row were crowded. Slightly hidden behind a
tree, he stood and watched. A gay crowd of promenaders passed along the
broad path, and the air was filled with the echo of laughter, the jargon
of the day, intimate references to a common world, invitations lightly
given and lightly accepted. It was Sunday morning, in a season when
colour was the craze of the moment, and the women who swept by seemed to
his rather mystical fancy like the flowers in some of the great open
spaces he knew so well, stirred into movement by a soft wind. They were
very beautiful, these western women; handsome, too, the men with whom
they talked and flirted. Always they had that air, however, of absolute
complacency, as though they felt nothing of the ques