what I
have written home to my cousin the Emperor. That is what I pray that our
young professors will teach throughout Japan.. That is what it will be
my mission to teach my country people if the Fates will that I return
safely home. East and West are too far apart. We are well outside the
coming European struggle. Our strength will come to us from nearer
home."

"China!" the Prime Minister exclaimed.

"The China of our own making," the Prince declared, a note of tense
enthusiasm creeping into his tone,--"China recreated after its great
lapse of a thousand years. You and I in our lifetime shall not see
it, but there will come a day when the ancient conquests of Persia and
Greece and Rome will seem as nothing before the all-conquering armies of
China and Japan. Until those days we need no allies. We will have none.
We must accept the insults of America and the rough hand of Germany. We
must be strong enough to wait!"

A footman entered the room and made his way to the Duke's chair.

"Your Grace," he said, "a gentleman is ringing up from Downing Street
who says he is speaking from the Home Office."

"Whom does he want?" the Duke asked.

"Both Your Grace and Mr. Haviland," the man replied. "He wished me to
say that the matter was of the utmost importance."

The Duke rose at once and glanced at the clock.

"It is an extraordinary hour," he remarked, "for Heseltine to be wanting
us. Shall we go and see what it means, Haviland? You will excuse us,
Prince?"

The Prince bowed.

"I think that we have talked enough of serious affairs tonight," he
said. "I shall challenge Sir Edward to a game of billiards."

CHAPTER XXXIII. UNAFRAID

The Prince, still fully attired, save that in place of his dress coat he
wore a loose smoking jacket, stood at the windows of his sitting room
at Devenham Castle, looking across the park. In the somewhat fitful
moonlight the trees had taken to themselves grotesque shapes. Away
in the distance the glimmer of the sea shone like a thin belt of
quicksilver. The stable clock had struck two. The whole place seemed
at rest. Only one light was gleaming from a long low building which had
been added to the coach houses of recent years for a motor garage. That
one light, the Prince knew, was on his account. There his chauffeur
waited, untiring and sleepless, with his car always ready for that last
rush to the coast, the advisability of which the Prince had considered
more than once during th