The Great Prince Shan Part 24

"One more, then."

"Prince Shan was in Paris two years ago, incognito," she continued.

"There was at the time a small but very fas.h.i.+onable restaurant in the Bois, close to the Pre Catelan. He presented himself one night there for dinner, accompanied, I believe, by La Belle Nita, the Chinese dancer who is in London to-day. As you know, there is little in Prince Shan's appearance to denote the Oriental, but for some reason or other the proprietor refused him a table. Prince Shan made no scene. He left and went elsewhere. Three nights later, the cafe was burnt to the ground, and the proprietor was ruined."

"Anything else?" Nigel asked.

"Only one thing more," she replied. "I have known him slightly for years. In Asia he ranks to all men as little less than a G.o.d. His palaces are filled with priceless treasures. He has the finest collection of jewels in the world. His wealth is simply inexhaustible.

His appearance you appreciate. Yet I have never seen him look at a woman as he looked at your cousin the first time he met her. I was at the Ritz with my father, and I watched. I know you think that I am being foolish.

I am not. I am a person with a very great deal of common sense, and I tell you that Prince Shan has never desired a thing in life to which he has not helped himself. Maggie is a clever child, but she cannot toss knives with a conjuror."

Nigel was impressed and a little worried.

"It seems absurd to think that anything could happen to Maggie here in London," he said, "after--"

He paused abruptly. Naida smiled at him.

"After her escape from Germany, I suppose you were going to say? You see, I know all about it. There was no Prince Shan in Berlin."

He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"Well," he admitted, "I don't quite bring myself to believe in your terrible ogre, so I shall not worry. Tell me what news you have from Russia?"

"Political?"

"Any news."

She smiled.

"I notice," she said, "that English people are changing their att.i.tude towards my country. A few years ago she seemed negligible to them. Now they are beginning to have--shall I call them fears? Even my kind host, I think, would like to know what is in Paul Matinsky's heart as he hears the friends of Oscar Immelan plead their cause."

"I admit it," he told her frankly. "I will go farther. I would give a great deal to know what is in your own mind to-day concerning us and our destiny. But these things are not for the moment. It was not to discuss or even to think of them that I asked you here to-day."

"Why did you invite me, then?" she asked, smiling.

"Because I wanted the pleasure of having you opposite me," he replied,--"because I wanted to know you better."

"And are you progressing?"

"Indifferently well," he acknowledged. "I seem to gain a little and slide back again. You are not an easy person to know well."

"Nothing that is worth having is easy," she answered, "and I can a.s.sure you, when my friends.h.i.+p is once gained, it is a rare and steadfast thing."

"And your affection?" he ventured.

Her eyes rested upon his for a moment and then suddenly drooped. A little tinge of colour stole into her cheeks. For a moment she seemed to have lost her admirable poise.

"That is not easily disturbed," she told him quietly. "I think that I must have an unfortunate temperament, there are so few people for whom I really care."

He took his courage into both hands.

"I have heard it rumoured," he said, "that Matinsky is the only man who has ever touched your heart."

She shook her head.

"That is not the truth. Paul Matinsky cares for me in his strange way, and he has a curiously exaggerated appreciation of my brain. There have been times," she went on, after a moment's hesitation, "when I myself have been disturbed by fancies concerning him, but those times have pa.s.sed."

"I am glad," he said quietly.

His fingers, straying across the tablecloth, met hers. She did not withdraw them. He clasped her hand, and it remained for a moment pa.s.sive in his. Then she withdrew it and leaned back in her chair.

"Is that meant to introduce a more intimate note into our conversation?"

she asked, with a slight wrinkling of the forehead and the beginnings of a smile upon her lips.

"If I dared, I would answer 'yes'," he a.s.sured her.

"They tell me," she continued pensively, "that Englishmen more than any other men in the world have the flair for saying convincingly the things which they do not mean."

"In my case, that would not be true," he answered. "My trouble is that I dare not say one half of what I feel."

She looked across the table at him, and Nigel suddenly felt a great weight of depression lifted from his heart. He forgot all about his country's peril. Life and its possibilities seemed somehow all different. He was carried away by a rare wave of emotion.

"Naida!" he whispered.

"Yes?"

Her eyes were soft and expectant. Something of the gravity had gone from her face. She was like a girl, suddenly young with new thoughts.

"You know what I am going to say to you?"

"Do not say it yet, please," she begged. "Somehow it seems to me that the time has not come, though the thought of what may be in your heart is wonderful. I want to dream about it first," she went on. "I want to think."

He laughed, a strange sound almost to his own ears, for Nigel, since his uncle's death, had tasted the very depths of depression.

"I obey," he agreed. "It is well to dally with the great things.

Meanwhile, they grow."

She smiled across at him.

"I hope that they may," she answered. "And you will ask me to lunch again?"

"Lunch or dine or walk or motor--whatever you will," he promised.

She reflected for a moment and then laughed. She was drawing on her gloves now, and Nigel was paying the bill.

"There are some people who will not like this," she said.

"And one," he declared, "for whom it is going to make life a Paradise."