“I must get him to talk to me,” Nigel said.  “As a matter of fact, I don’t think that we need fear Asiatic intervention over here.  Prince Shan is too great a diplomatist to risk his country’s new prosperity.”

“Prince Shan,” Maggie declared, “is the one man in the world I am longing to meet.  He was at Oxford with you, wasn’t he, Nigel?”

“For one year only.  He went from there to Harvard.”

“Tell me what he was like,” she begged.

“I have only a hazy recollection of him,” Nigel confessed.  “He was a most brilliant scholar and a fine horseman.  I can’t remember whether he did anything at games.”

“Good-looking?”

“Extraordinarily so.  He was very reserved, though, and even in those days he was far more exclusive than our own royal princes.  We all thought him clever, but no one dreamed that he would become Asia’s great man.  I’ll tell you all that I can remember about him another time, Maggie.  I’m rather curious about that report of Atcheson’s.  Have you any idea what it is about?”

She shook her head.

“None at all.  It is in the old Foreign Office cipher and it looks like gibberish.  I only know that the first few lines he transcribed gave dad the jumps.”

“I wonder if he has finished it by now.”

“He’ll send for you when he has.  How do you think I am looking, Nigel?”

“Wonderful,” he answered, rising to his feet and standing with his elbow upon the mantelpiece, gazing down at her.  “But then you are wonderful, aren’t you, Maggie?  You know I always thought so.”

She picked up a mirror from the little bag by her side and scrutinized her features.

“It can’t be my face,” she decided, turning towards him with a smile.  “I must have charm.”

“Your face is adorable,” he declared.

“Are you going to flirt with me?” she asked, with a faint smile at the corners of her lips.  “You always do it so well and so convincingly.  And I hate foreigners.  They are terribly in earnest but there is no finesse about them.  You may kiss me just once, please, Nigel, the way I like.”

He held her for a moment in his arms, tenderly, but with a reserve to which she was accustomed from him.  Presently she thrust him away.  Her own colour had risen a little.

“Delightful,” she murmured.  “Think of the wasted months!  No one has kissed me, Nigel, since we said good-bye.”

“Have you made up your mind to marry me yet?” he asked.

“My dear,” she answered, patting his hand, “do restrain your ardour.  Do you really want to marry me?”

“Of course I do!”

“You don’t love me.”

“I am awfully fond of you,” he assured her, “and I don’t love any one else.”

She shook her head.

“It isn’t enough, Nigel,” she declared, “and, strange to say, it’s exactly how I feel about you.”

“I don’t see why it shouldn’t be enough,” he argued.  “Perhaps we have too much common sense for these violent feelings.”