“What do I think of Theos?” Sara repeated. “I think it must be the lost paradise of the lotus-eaters. It does not seem possible for anything ever to happen here.”

Ughtred laughed.

“We share the primitive passions with the rest of mankind,” he assured her. “We know what it is to be excited, even to be rowdy. The wear and tear of life perhaps touches us more lightly than in your Western cities. You see we are a rural people.”

“Miss Van Decht,” Reist remarked dryly, “misses perhaps the clang of the electric cars and the factory sirens.”

“It is the proverbial peace of the city amongst the mountains,” Ughtred said. “Yet if you listen you can hear the murmur of voices in the cafÉs, and there is a band playing in the square.”

“It is all—delightful,” Sara declared. “Only I wonder that you find it possible to take life seriously here.”

They were sitting out on the great stone balcony behind the palace—Ughtred, Reist, and Marie, Mr. Van Decht and Sara. A servant in spotless white livery had silently arranged coffee and liqueur in strange-looking bottles upon a table already laden with fruit. Below them were the terraced lawns leading to the river, dotted with dark fir-trees and flowering shrubs—beyond the red roofs and white fronts of many villas, in the distance the blue mountains. The King and Sara Van Decht were sitting side by side. Marie, unusually taciturn, leaned back in her chair, listening and watching with half-closed eyes.

Ughtred lit a fresh cigarette, and smoked for a moment thoughtfully.

“I can assure you,” he said, “that life is, in its way, as complex a thing here as in the greater cities. The people are very poor, and how to raise money enough to develop the country and pay our way without undue taxation is a very serious problem indeed. Then you must not forget that we live always in the shadow of a great danger.”

Sara looked at him inquiringly. He pointed southwards to the mountains.

“Beyond there,” he said, “is Turkey, and Turkey is our eternal enemy. Even now there are strained relations between us. Night and day our watchmen guard the passes. There have been rumours lately of an impending raid upon our frontier villages.”

Sara listened with rapt attention.

“How fascinating. It really sounds quite mediÆval.”

“We are mediÆval in more ways than one,” he continued. “Our standing army consists of barely one thousand men, but in case of war the whole of our male population would take up arms. Every man must fight himself for his home and his native land. If you can spare the time here we will go to some of the more distant villages, and you will see the Saturday drill. I am rather proud of my military system.”

She looked across at her father.

“He is so restless,” she said. “I can never tell how long he will stand any one place. Just at present he talks as though he were disposed to settle down here for the rest of his life.”

Marie leaned forward. Her face gleamed pale in the twilight, her tone was almost openly contemptuous.

“Away from the electric cars, and sirens, and all the delights of your Western cities?”

Sara nodded gravely.

“Yes! Away even from the Paris edition of the New York Herald. But then, my father, you know, is terribly mercenary. I believe he thinks that there is scope for the capitalist here.”

“Your father is quite right then,” Ughtred answered, smiling. “Try and persuade him to give the place a trial. It is supposed, you know, to be the healthiest spot in Europe.”

“Why, I’m in no hurry to leave, and that’s a fact,” Mr. Van Decht admitted. “I’ve an appointment with the manager of your cars here to-morrow, and if we do business I guess I’ll have to stop.”

Sara laughed softly.

“That’s just like father!” she exclaimed. “Wherever he goes and finds horse-cars he wants to either buy the company out or put in his own system of electric cars. I’m afraid you think we’re very commercial, don’t you, Countess?”

“Oh, no,” Marie answered, coldly. “One rather expects that, you know, from your nation. It is very interesting. I must confess, though, that I do not wish to see electric cars in the streets of Theos.”

“And why not, young lady?” Mr. Van Decht inquired.

“Because I love my old city too well to wish to see her modernized and made hideous,” Marie answered. “It is scarcely a feeling with which one could expect strangers to sympathize; but there are many others besides myself who would feel the same way.”

Mr. Van Decht nodded.

“Is that so? Well, nowadays the countries who place the picturesque before the useful are very few and far between. I guess it’s as well for the community at large that it is so. You would scarcely call that broken-down old omnibus, dragged along by a lame mule, a credit to Theos or a particularly picturesque survival.”

Marie shrugged her shoulders, and dismissed the subject with a little gesture of contempt. Mr. Van Decht waited for a minute, and then, as she remained silent, continued—

“A country which neglects the laws of progress is not a country which can ever hope for prosperity. Don’t you agree with me, sir?” he asked the King.

Ughtred nodded.

“I am afraid that I do,” he admitted. “Theos, with its vineyards and hand-ploughs, its simple hill-folk and its quaint village towns, is, from an artistic point of view, delightful. Yet I am bound to admit that for the sake of its children and the unborn generations, I would rather see factory chimneys in its valleys and mine shafts in the hills. The people are poor, and so long as we have to import everything we use and wear, we must get poorer and poorer. The country is productive enough. We have minerals and a wonderful soil. What we need is capital and enterprise.”

Marie shuddered.

“And you are a Tyrnaus!” she murmured, with a sidelong glance of reproach.

“It is my fortune,” he said, “good or bad, to know more of the world outside than those who came before me. Please God, I am going to leave Theos a richer and happier country when my days here are spent. If we are spared from war I shall do it.”

“In future,” Marie said, “I shall dread war less. I begin to see that there are other evil things.”

She rose and bowed slightly to the King.

“Your Majesty will excuse me,” she said. “I find the air a little cold.”

She passed down the terrace steps, her maid a few yards behind. A certain reserve fell upon the others.

“I am afraid,” Sara said to Nicholas of Reist, “that your sister does not approve of me.”

He hesitated.

“Marie,” he said, “is passionately faithful to all the traditions of our family and our race. This is a conservative country, and no one more so than she. I myself am in close sympathy with her. Yet my reason tells me that we are both wrong. Our peasantry are finding already the struggle for existence a severe one—a single failure in the crops would mean a famine. It has occurred to me, Mr. Van Decht, that the advice of a man of affairs such as yourself may be very useful to us.”

Ughtred rose up.

“You shall talk progress together,” he said, “while I show Miss Van Decht my pictures.”

Marie held the note in her fingers, looking at it doubtfully. It was addressed to her, thrust secretly into her maid’s hand by a stranger in the crush outside the palace gates. At least that was the girl’s story. She tore it open.

She tore the note into a thousand pieces, and walked restlessly up and down the great room. Her eyes were lit with fire, and a scarlet spot burned in her cheeks.

“Oh, if he should dare,” she murmured. “If he should dare!”

She stopped abruptly before the picture of Rudolph. The flickering light of fifty wax candles from the huge silver candelabra on the oaken table lit up the dull canvas. It was Ughtred himself who looked down at her.

“Queen of Theos!” she murmured. “Why not? We have drunk together from the King’s cup.”

“Countess!”

She turned quickly round. Brand had come silently into the room.