“No; there certainly was not!” He laughed, then was serious at once.  Shirley’s tense, arrested figure, her bright, eager eyes, her parted lips, as he saw her before the battle pictures in the gallery at Paris, came up before him and gave him pause.  He could not play upon that stolen glance or tease her curiosity in respect to it.  If this were a ship flirtation, it might be well enough; but the very sweetness and open-heartedness of her youth shielded her.  It seemed to him in that moment a contemptible and unpardonable thing that he had followed her about—­and caught her, there at Paris, in an exalted mood, to which she had been wrought by the moving incidents of war.

“I was in Paris during the exhibition,” he said quietly.  “Ormsby, the American painter—­the man who did the High Tide at Gettysburg—­is an acquaintance of mine.”

“Oh!”

It was Ormsby’s painting that had particularly captivated Shirley.  She had returned to it day after day; and the thought that Armitage had taken advantage of her deep interest in Pickett’s charging gray line was annoying, and she abruptly changed the subject.

Shirley had speculated much as to the meaning of Armitage’s remark at the carriage door in Geneva—­that he expected the slayer of the old Austrian prime minister to pass that way.  Armitage had not referred to the crime in any way in his talks with her on the King Edward; their conversations had been pitched usually in a light and frivolous key, or if one were disposed to be serious the other responded in a note of levity.

“We’re all imperialists at heart,” said Shirley, referring to a talk between them earlier in the day.  “We Americans are hungry for empire; we’re simply waiting for the man on horseback to gallop down Broadway and up Fifth Avenue with a troop of cavalry at his heels and proclaim the new dispensation.”

“And before he’d gone a block a big Irish policeman would arrest him for disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, or for giving a show without a license, and the republic would continue to do business at the old stand.”

“No; the police would have been bribed in advance, and would deliver the keys of the city to the new emperor at the door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and his majesty would go to Sherry’s for luncheon, and sign a few decrees, and order the guillotine set up in Union Square.  Do you follow me, Mr. Armitage?”

“Yes; to the very steps of the guillotine, Miss Claiborne.  But the looting of the temples and the plundering of banks—­if the thing is bound to be—­I should like to share in the general joy.  But I have an idea, Miss Claiborne,” he exclaimed, as though with inspiration.

“Yes—­you have an idea—­”

“Let me be the man on horseback; and you might be—­”

“Yes—­the suspense is terrible!—­what might I be, your Majesty?”

“Well, we should call you—­”

He hesitated, and she wondered whether he would be bold enough to meet the issue offered by this turn of their nonsense.