ed box this morning.
Of course it is a misfortune, but as for me, personally, I don't
care----"

"It doesn't happen to concern you personally, Prince Erlik," said
Princess Naia dryly.

"No," he admitted, unabashed by the snub, "it does not touch me.
Cavalry cannot operate on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Therefore, God be
thanked, I shall be elsewhere when the snow boils."

Rue tuned to Neeland:

"His one idea of diplomacy and war is a thousand Kuban Cossacks at
full speed."

"And that is an excellent idea, is it not, Kazatchka?" he said,
smiling impudently at the Princess, who only laughed at the
familiarity.

"I hope," added Captain Sengoun, "that I may live to gallop through a
few miles of diplomacy at full speed before they consign me to the
Opolchina." Turning to Neeland, "The reserve--the old man's home, you
know. God forbid!" And he drained his goblet and looked defiantly at
Rue Carew.

"A Cossack is a Cossack," said the Princess, "be he Terek or Kuban,
Don or Astrachan, and they all know as much about diplomacy as Prince
Erlik--or Izzet Bey's nose.... James, you are unusually silent, dear
friend. Are you regretting those papers?"

"It's a pity," he said. But he had not been thinking of the lost
papers; Rue Carew's beauty preoccupied him. The girl was in black,
which made her skin dazzling, and reddened the chestnut colour of her
hair.

Her superb young figure revealed an unsuspected loveliness where the
snowy symmetry of neck and shoulders and arms was delicately accented
by the filmy black of her gown.

He had never seen such a beautiful girl; she seemed more wonderful,
more strange, more aloof than ever. And this was what preoccupied and
entirely engaged his mind, and troubled it, so that his smile had a
tendency to become indefinite and his conversation mechanical at
times.

Captain Sengoun drained one more of numerous goblets; gazed
sentimentally at the Princess, then with equal sentiment at Rue
Carew.

"As for me," he said, with a carelessly happy gesture toward the
infinite, "plans are plans, and if they're stolen, _tant pis_! But
there are always Tartars in Tartary and Turks in Turkey. And, while
there are, there's hope for a poor devil of a Cossack who wants to
say a prayer in St. Sophia before he's gathered to his ancestors."

"Have any measures been taken at your Embassy to trace the plans?"
asked Neeland of the Princess.

"Of course," she said simply.

"Plans," remarked Sengoun, "ar