Kitty yawned and dropped back on her cushions.

“He still persists, does he, in spite of never being visible?”

“Oh, but he has been seen by ever so many people.  Let me think a moment.”  He sank into an attitude of meditative ease.  “The best description I ever had of him was from a friend of my mother, an elderly woman, thoroughly truthful and matter-of-fact.  She has seen him often.  He is kept in Russia, in St. Petersburg, that was.  He is about eight years old and of marvellous beauty.  He is always that in every version.  My old friend has seen him being driven in his sledge on the Nevskii Prospekt on winter afternoons; black horses with silver bells and a giant in uniform on the seat beside the driver.  He is always attended by this giant, who is responsible to the Grand Duke Paul for the boy.  This lady can produce no evidence beyond his beauty and his splendid furs and the fact that all the Americans in Petrograd know he is your son.”

Kitty laughed mournfully.

“If the Grand Duke Paul had a son, any old rag of a son, the province of Moscow couldn’t contain him!  He may, for aught I know, actually pretend to have a son.  It would be very like him.”  She looked at her finger-tips and her rings disapprovingly for a moment.  “Do you know, I’ve been thinking that I would rather like to lay hands on that youngster.  I believe he’d be interesting.  I’m bored with the world.”

Tevis looked up and said quickly: 

“Would you like him, really?”

“Of course I should,” she said indignantly.  “But, then, I like other things, too; and one has to choose.  When one has only two or three things to choose from, life is hard; when one has many, it is harder still.  No, on the whole, I don’t mind that story.  It’s rather pretty, except for the Grand Duke.  But not all of them are pretty.”

“Well, none of them are very ugly; at least I never heard but one that troubled me, and that was long ago.”

She looked interested.

“That is what I want to know; how do the ugly ones get started?  How did that one get going and what was it about?  Is it too dreadful to repeat?”

“No, it’s not especially dreadful; merely rather shabby.  If you really wish to know, and won’t be vexed, I can tell you exactly how it got going, for I took the trouble to find out.  But it’s a long story, and you really had nothing whatever to do with it.”

“Then who did have to do with it?  Tell me; I should like to know exactly how even one of them originated.”

“Will you be comfortable and quiet and not get into a rage, and let me look at you as much as I please?”