elingman, it is true,
may be considered the greatest spy who ever breathed, but a spy he is. If
we could only persuade your too amiable officials to believe one-tenth of
what we could tell them, I think our friend there would breakfast in an
English fortress, if you have such a thing."

"We should only place him under police supervision," declared Norgate,
"and let him go. It's just our way, that's all."

She waved the subject of Selingman on one side, but almost at that moment
he stood once more before them. He held an evening paper in his hand.

"I bring you the news," he announced. "A terrible tragedy has happened.
The Archduke of Austria and his Consort have been assassinated on their
tour through Bosnia."

For a moment neither Anna nor Norgate moved. Norgate felt a strange sense
of sickening excitement. It was as though the curtain had been rung up!

"Is the assassin's name there?" he asked.

"The crime," Selingman replied, "appears to have been committed by a
young Servian student. His name is Sigismund Henriote."

CHAPTER XXXI

They paused at last, breathless, and walked out of the most wonderful
ballroom in London into the gardens, aglow with fairy lanterns whose
brilliance was already fading before the rising moon. They found a seat
under a tall elm tree, and Anna leaned back. It was a queer mixture of
sounds which came to their ears; in the near distance, the music of a
wonderful orchestra rising and falling; further away, the roar of the
great city still awake and alive outside the boundary of those grey
stone walls.

"Of course," she murmured, "this is the one thing which completes my
subjugation. Fancy an Englishman being able to waltz! Almost in that
beautiful room I fancied myself back in Vienna, except that it was more
wonderful because it was you."

"You are turning my head," he whispered. "This is like a night out of
Paradise. And to think that we are really in the middle of London!"

"Ah! do not mention London," she begged, "or else I shall begin to think
of Sodom and Gomorrah. After all, why need one live for anything else
except the present?"

"There is the Comtesse," he reminded her disconsolately.

She sighed.

"How horrid of you!"

"Let us forget her, then," he begged. "We will go into the marquee there
and have supper, and afterwards dance again. We'll steal to-night out of
the calendar. We'll call it ours and play with it as we please."

She shook her head.

"No,"