swered, smiling. "Try and
persuade him to give the place a trial. It is supposed, you know, to
be the healthiest spot in Europe."

"Why, I'm in no hurry to leave, and that's a fact," Mr. Van Decht
admitted. "I've an appointment with the manager of your cars here
to-morrow, and if we do business I guess I'll have to stop."

Sara laughed softly.

"That's just like father!" she exclaimed. "Wherever he goes and finds
horse-cars he wants to either buy the company out or put in his own
system of electric cars. I'm afraid you think we're very commercial,
don't you, Countess?"

"Oh, no," Marie answered, coldly. "One rather expects that, you know,
from your nation. It is very interesting. I must confess, though, that
I do not wish to see electric cars in the streets of Theos."

"And why not, young lady?" Mr. Van Decht inquired.

"Because I love my old city too well to wish to see her modernized and
made hideous," Marie answered. "It is scarcely a feeling with which
one could expect strangers to sympathize; but there are many others
besides myself who would feel the same way."

Mr. Van Decht nodded.

"Is that so? Well, nowadays the countries who place the picturesque
before the useful are very few and far between. I guess it's as well
for the community at large that it is so. You would scarcely call that
broken-down old omnibus, dragged along by a lame mule, a credit to
Theos or a particularly picturesque survival."

Marie shrugged her shoulders, and dismissed the subject with a little
gesture of contempt. Mr. Van Decht waited for a minute, and then, as
she remained silent, continued--

"A country which neglects the laws of progress is not a country which
can ever hope for prosperity. Don't you agree with me, sir?" he asked
the King.

Ughtred nodded.

"I am afraid that I do," he admitted. "Theos, with its vineyards and
hand-ploughs, its simple hill-folk and its quaint village towns, is,
from an artistic point of view, delightful. Yet I am bound to admit
that for the sake of its children and the unborn generations, I would
rather see factory chimneys in its valleys and mine shafts in the
hills. The people are poor, and so long as we have to import
everything we use and wear, we must get poorer and poorer. The country
is productive enough. We have minerals and a wonderful soil. What we
need is capital and enterprise."

Marie shuddered.

"And you are a Tyrnaus!" she murmured, with a sidelong glance of
reproach.