ched the greeting. I wanted to judge from it, if I
could, to what extent the old acquaintance had been kept up. But I might
have saved myself waste of brain tissue. Robert was anxious to leave no
mystery.

"Princess," he said, hastily, when he had taken his guest's slim hand in
its gray glove, "Princess, I think you must have heard of Miss Opal
Fawcett."

"Oh, yes. And we have met--once," I replied.

Opal's narrow gray eyes turned to me--not without reluctance I thought.

"I remember well," she murmured, in her plaintive voice. "I never forget
a face. You were Miss Courtenaye then. Lately I've been hearing of you
from Miss Arnold, who used to be my secretary, and is now yours."

I was thankful she didn't bring in _June's_ name!

"Miss Fawcett and I have known each other a good many years," Robert
hurried on. "She was once in a play with me, before she found her real
_metier_. She kindly comes to see me now and then, when she can take a
day off."

"I want to bid you good-bye--if you are really going out of England,"
Opal said.

She had ceased to look at me now, but I went on looking hard at her. She
was in what might be a spirit conception of a motor costume: smoke gray
velvet, and yards of long, floating veil shot from gray to mauve. She
wore a close toque with two little jutting Mercury wings, from behind
which those yards of unnecessary chiffon fell. She had a narrow oval
face, which Nature and (I thought) Art combined to make pale as pearl.
Her hair, pushed forward by the toque, was so colourless a brown that it
looked like thick shadow. She had a beautifully cut, delicate nose, but
her lips were thin and the upper one rather long and flat, otherwise she
would have been pretty. Even as it was she had a kind of fascination,
and I thought her the most graceful, willowy creature I'd ever seen.

"Well," said Robert, "as it happens I've put off going abroad, through a
kind of mental laziness. But in the ordinary course of events you'd have
come to-day only to find me gone--which would have been a pity. When I
answered your letter, I told you----"

"Yes, but I _felt_ you'd still be here," she cut him short. "Apparently
the Princess had the same premonition."

"Oh, I just happened to be passing," I fibbed, "and took my chance.
Fortunately, I came in the nick of time to give Captain Lorillard a lift
to town in my car. It will save him a journey by train."

"Then I am in the nick of time, too!" said Opal. "If I'