when she calls I come. There are no other voices in the world for
one of my race and faith. The library you said, Lady Grace? I must go
and find your father."

He passed out, closing the door behind him. Captain Wilmot chalked his
cue carefully.

"That's the queerest fellow I ever knew in my life," he said. "He seems
all the time as though his head were in the clouds."

Lady Grace sighed. She too was chalking her cue.

"I wonder," she said, "what it would be like to live in the clouds."

CHAPTER XXXII. PRINCE MAIYO SPEAKS

The library at Devenham Castle was a large and sombre apartment, with
high oriel windows and bookcases reaching to the ceiling. It had an
unused and somewhat austere air. Tonight especially an atmosphere of
gloom seemed to pervade it. The Prince, when he opened the door, found
the three men who were awaiting him seated at an oval table at the
further end of the room.

"I do not intrude, I trust?" the Prince said. "I understood that you
wished me to come here."

"Certainly," the Duke answered, "we were sitting here awaiting your
arrival. Will you take this easy chair? The cigarettes are at your
elbow."

The Prince declined the easy chair and leaned for a moment against the
table.

"Perhaps later," he said. "Just now I feel that you have something to
say to me. Is it not so? I talk better when I am standing."

It was the Prime Minister who made the first plunge. He spoke without
circumlocution, and his tone was graver than usual.

"Prince," he said, "this is perhaps the last time that we shall all
meet together in this way. You go from us direct to the seat of your
Government. So far there has been very little plain speaking between
us. It would perhaps be more in accord with etiquette if we let you go
without a word, and waited for a formal interchange of communications
between your Ambassador and ourselves. But we have a feeling, Sir Edward
and I, that we should like to talk to you directly. Before we go any
further, however, let me ask you this question. Have you any objection,
Prince, to discussing a certain matter here with us?"

The Prince for several moments made no reply. He was still standing
facing the fireplace, leaning slightly against the table behind him. On
his right was the Duke, seated in a library chair. On his left the Prime
Minister and Sir Edward Bransome. The Prince seemed somehow to have
become the central figure of the little group.

"Perhaps," he said, "if