a great height tiny columns of water that tinkled back to the square of metal upon which the table was set.  A huge fan of blanched grasses automatically swayed from above.  On a side-table were decanters and cups and platters of a material frail and transparent.  Before the shuttered window stood an observable plant with coloured leaves.  On a great table in the room’s centre were scattered objects which confused the eye.  A light curtain stirring in the fan’s faint breeze hung at the far end of the room.

In a career which had held many surprises, some of which St. George would never be at liberty to reveal to the paper in whose service he had come upon them, this was one of the most alluring.  The mere existence of this strange and luxurious habitation in the heart of such a neighbourhood would, past expression, delight Mr. Crass, the feature man, and no doubt move even Chillingworth to approval.  Chillingworth and Crass!  Already they seemed strangers.  St. George glanced at Miss Holland; she was looking from side to side, like a bird alighted among strange flowers; she met his eyes and dimpled in frank delight.  Mrs. Hastings sat erectly beside her, her tortoise-rimmed glasses expressing bland approval.  The improbability of her surroundings had quite escaped her in her satisfied discovery that the place was habitable.  The lawyer, his thin lips parted, his head thrown back so that his hair rested upon his coat collar, remained standing, one long hand upon a coat lapel.

“Ah,” said Miss Holland softly, “it is an adventure, Aunt Dora.”

St. George liked that.  It irritated him, he had once admitted, to see a woman live as if living were a matter of life and death.  He wished her to be alive to everything, but without suspiciously scrutinizing details, like a census-taker.  To appreciate did not seem to him properly to mean to assess.  Miss Holland, he would have said, seemed to live by the beats of her heart and not by the waves of her hair—­but another proof, perhaps, of “if thou likest her opinions thou wilt praise her virtues.”

It was but a moment before the curtain was lifted, and there approached a youth, apparently in the twenties, slender and delicately formed as a woman, his dark face surmounted by a great deal of snow-white hair.  He was wearing garments of grey, cut in unusual and graceful lines, and his throat was closely wound in folds of soft white, fastened by a rectangular green jewel of notable size and brilliance.  His eyes, large and of exceeding beauty and gentleness, were fixed upon St. George.

“Sir,” said St. George, “we have been given this address as one where we may be assisted in some inquiries of the utmost importance.  The name which we have is simply ‘Tabnit.’  Have I the honour—­”

Their host bowed.

“I am Prince Tabnit,” he said quietly.

St. George, filled with fresh amazement, gravely named himself and, making presentation of the others, purposely omitted the name of Miss Holland.  However, hardly had he finished before their host bowed before Miss Holland herself.