o methods of leaving things unsaid,
princess."

"Which is diplomacy?" she suggested.

"Which is diplomacy."

"Then I think you are both great artists," she said, with a laugh, as
the door opened and her father entered the room.

"I only come to ask you a question--a word," said the prince. "Heavens!
your English language! I have a man down-stairs--a question of
business--and he speaks the oddest English. Now what is the meaning of
the word jettison?"

Cartoner gave him the word in French.

"Ah!" cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, "of course.
How foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will
excuse me, will you not? Wanda will give you some tea."

And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a person
so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word jettison.

The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke
continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had
found him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their
knowledge of him. If he had only been that which is called a public
man, a novelist or a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his
advertising would have been done for him by others. For there was in him
that unknown quantity which the world must needs think magnificent.

"I want you to tell me all you know about him," said the princess in her
brisk way. "He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have
not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the sort
of person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love
and marry, or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married
already, and his wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy.
But I don't. He has no wife--unless he has two."

"I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career."

"I do not care about his career," said the princess, lightly. "I go
deeper than careers."

She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay,
blue eyes.

"A man's career is only the surface of his life."

"Then some men's lives are all surface," said Cartoner.

Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.

"Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse," she replied.

Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this girl,
who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly clear and
decisive views upon it.