“That style of music should appeal to you, Madam,” observed the Frenchman.  “You who have been among those favored artists to visit the land of the free.  Did you have to play in a tent, and were you literally showered with gold?”

“Both,” she laughed.  “It is a land of many surprises.”

“I have heard es ist alles ’the almighty dollar’,” said a musician from Berlin, one of the gay company.

“Exaggeration, mein Herr!” she retorted, with a wave of the hand.  “It is also a komischer romantischer land.”  For a moment she seemed thinking.

“Isn’t that his excellency, Prince Boris Strogareff?” inquired abruptly a young man with a beyond-the-Volga physiognomy.

She started.  “The prince?” An odd look came into her eyes.  “Do you believe in telepathic waves, Monsieur?” she said gaily to the Frenchman.

“Not to any great extent, Madam. Mais pourquoi?"

“Nothing.  But I don’t see this prince you speak of.”

“He has disappeared now,” replied her countryman, a fellow-player recently come from Odessa.  “It is his first dip again into the gaieties of the world.  For several years,” with the proud accents of one able to impart information concerning an important personage, “he has been living in seclusion on his vast estates near the Caspian Sea—­ruling a kingdom greater than many a European principality.  But have you never met the prince?” To Sonia Turgeinov.  “He used to be a patron of the arts, according to report, before the sad accident that befell him.”

“I think,” observed Sonia Turgeinov, with brows bent as if striving to recollect, “I did meet him once.  But a poor actress is forced to meet so many princes and nobles, nowadays,” she laughed, “that—­”

“True!  Only one would not easily forget the prince, the handsomest man in Asia.”

She yawned slightly.

“What was this ‘sad accident’ you were speaking of, mein Herr? observed the German, with a mind trained to conversational continuity.

“The prince was cruising somewhere and his yacht was wrecked,” said the young Roscius from Odessa.  “A number of the crew were drowned; his excellency, when picked up, was unconscious.  A blow on the head from a falling timber, or from being dashed on the rocks, I’m not sure which.  At any rate, for a long time his life was despaired of, but he recovered and is as strong and sound as ever.  Only, there is a strange sequel; or not so strange,” reflectively, “since cases of its kind are common.  The injury was on his head, as I remarked, and his mind became—­”

“Affected, Monsieur?” said the Frenchman.  “You mean this great noble of the steppe is no longer right, mentally?”

“He is one of the keenest satraps in Asia, Monsieur.  His brain is as alert as ever, only he has suffered a complete loss of memory.”

Sonia Turgeinov’s interest was of a distinctly artificial nature; she tapped on the floor with her foot; then abruptly arose.  “Shan’t we go into the garden for our coffee?” she said.  “It is close here.”