the vigil of
waiting.

Clyde was less carefully watched than the others. "Jealousy will keep
him to the woman's side," thought his Kurdish captors. They did not know
that his wilder, truer love was calling to him with a hundred voices from
beyond the village bounds. And one evening, finding that he was not
getting the attention to which he was entitled, Clyde slipped away down
the mountain side and resumed his study of Central Asian game-fowl. The
remaining captives were guarded henceforth with greater rigour, but
Dobrinton at any rate scarcely regretted Clyde's departure.

The long arm, or perhaps one might better say the long purse, of
diplomacy at last effected the release of the prisoners, but the
Habsburgs were never to enjoy the guerdon of their outlay. On the quay
of the little Black Sea port, where the rescued pair came once more into
contact with civilisation, Dobrinton was bitten by a dog which was
assumed to be mad, though it may only have been indiscriminating. The
victim did not wait for symptoms of rabies to declare themselves, but
died forthwith of fright, and Vanessa made the homeward journey alone,
conscious somehow of a sense of slightly restored respectability. Clyde,
in the intervals of correcting the proofs of his book on the game-fowl of
Central Asia, found time to press a divorce suit through the Courts, and
as soon as possible hied him away to the congenial solitudes of the Gobi
Desert to collect material for a work on the fauna of that region.
Vanessa, by virtue perhaps of her earlier intimacy with the cooking rites
of the whiting, obtained a place on the kitchen staff of a West End club.
It was not brilliant, but at least it was within two minutes of the Park.

THE BAKER'S DOZEN

_Characters_--

Major Richard Dumbarton.

Mrs. Carewe.

Mrs. Paly-Paget.

_Scene_--Deck of eastward-bound steamer. Major Dumbarton seated on
deck-chair, another chair by his side, with the name "Mrs. Carewe"
painted on it, a third near by.

(Enter R. Mrs. Carewe, seats herself leisurely in her deck-chair, the
Major affecting to ignore her presence.)

_Major_ (turning suddenly): Emily! After all these years! This is fate!

_Em._: Fate! Nothing of the sort; it's only me. You men are always such
fatalists. I deferred my departure three whole weeks, in order to come
out in the same boat that I saw you were travelling by. I bribed the
steward to put out chairs side by side in an un