up the sand of the beach and drove it
whispering against the high windows, and the beat of the waves upon the
shores filled out and marked the silence of the room.

The Prince Kalonay stepped from the circle and stood for a moment
before the King, regarding him with an expression of grief and bitter
irony. The King's eyes rose insolently, and faltered, and sank.

"For many years, your Majesty," the Prince said, but so solemnly that
it was as though he were a judge upon the bench, or a priest speaking
across an open grave, "the Princes of my house have served the Kings of
yours. In times of war they fought for the King in battle, they
beggared themselves for him in times of peace; our women sold their
jewels for the King, our men gave him their lives, and in all of these
centuries the story of their loyalty, of their devotion, has had but
one sequel, and has met with but one reward,--ingratitude and
selfishness and treachery. You know how I have served you, Louis. You
know that I gave up my fortune and my home to go into exile with you,
and I did that gladly. But I did more than that. I did more than any
king or any man has the right to expect of any other man. I served
your idle purposes so well that you, yourself, called me your jackal,
the only title your Majesty has ever bestowed that was deserved. There
is no low thing nor no base thing that I have not done for you. To
serve your pleasures, to gain you money, I have sunken so low that all
the royal blood in Europe could not make me clean. But there is a
limit to what a man may do for his King, and to the loyalty a King may
have the right to demand. And to-day and here, with me, the story of
our devotion to your House ends, and you go your way and I go mine, and
the last of my race breaks his sword and throws it at your feet, and is
done with you and yours forever."

Even those in the room who held no sympathy in their hearts for the
sentiment that had inspired the young man, felt that at that moment and
in their hearing he had renounced what was to him his religion and his
faith, and on the faces of all was the expression of a deep pity and
concern. Their own adventure, in the light of his grief and bitterness
of spirit, seemed selfish and little, and they stood motionless, in an
awed and sorrowful silence.

The tense strain of the moment was broken suddenly by the advent on the
scene of an actor who had, in the rush of events, been neglected and
fo