, and a most uncomfortable position it
was! To-day you are King--and"--he glanced at Marie--"it is a trial to
one's disposition to refrain from envy."

Marie detached her hand softly from the King's sleeve.

"So gallant a speech, sir," she said, smiling, "must be rewarded. You
have not yet asked me to dance!"

CHAPTER XIX

"It seems to me," she said, quietly, "that all men must be ambitious,
that the love of power must be a part of their very existence."

"In England," he remarked, "we are more circumscribed, our limits are
more exact. Yet I suppose in our small way we all flutter our wings."

"I have a curiosity to understand things," she said, leaning back and
fanning herself slowly. "Help me to understand yourself."

He smiled.

"Do I puzzle you then?"

"A little--yes!"

"How?"

She looked at him reflectively out of her dark, full eyes. He looked
into them once and turned away--he scarcely knew why.

"You do not seem to me," she said, "like a man who would be content
with small things. You outwitted Domiloff himself. Yet you call
yourself a writer, and you are perhaps content?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Why not? There is excitement in it. One travels everywhere, meets
strange types of people, penetrates into unknown countries, carries
often one's life in one's hands. Oh, it's not a bad life."

"Perhaps," she answered, "I do not quite understand. Our newspapers
in Theos are different. You then are content?"

Again that curious searching gaze from the most beautiful eyes into
which he had ever looked. Brand, in whose life women had played a
small part, was unaccountably ill at ease. His easy nonchalance of
manner had deserted him. Content! He looked for a moment into his
future, and was astonished to find in it a new emptiness. She bent
over towards him, and at her touch a thrill went through his veins,
and set his heart beating to a new music.

"Just now," she murmured, "you told the King--that you envied him. Was
it true?"

"For the moment," he answered, "I think that it was."

"You then would like to be a king?"

He laughed, and answered her with a forced lightness.

"I? Not I! It would not suit me at all."

"What did you mean, then?" she persisted.

"I think," he said, "that I was a little lonely. You see I know none
of these people. I am a stranger, and I felt a little out of my
element. And then--then he came by with you, and--well, I wished I
were in his place."

She