“In this country,” he said, “you place so high a value upon the gift of life.  Nothing moves you so greatly as the killing of one man by another, or the death of a person whom you know.”

“There is no tragedy in the world so great!” Penelope declared.

The Prince shrugged his shoulders very slightly.

“My dear Miss Morse,” he said, “it is so that you think about life and death here.  Yet you call yourselves a Christian country—­you have a very beautiful faith.  With us, perhaps, there is a little more philosophy and something a little less definite in the trend of our religion.  Yet we do not dress Death in black clothes or fly from his outstretched hand.  We fear him no more that we do the night.  It is a thing that comes—­a thing that must be.”

He spoke so softly, and yet with so much conviction, that it seemed hard to answer him.  Penelope, however, was conscious of an almost feverish desire either to contradict him or to prolong the conversation by some means or other.

“Your point of view,” she said, “is well enough, Prince, for those who fall in battle, fighting for their country or for a great cause.  Don’t you think, though, that the horror of death is a more real thing in a case like this, where a man is killed in cold blood for the sake of robbery, or perhaps revenge?”

“One cannot tell,” the Prince answered thoughtfully.  “The battlefields of life are there for every one to cross.  This mysterious gentleman who seems to have met with his death so unexpectedly—­he, too, may have been the victim of a cause, knowing his dangers, facing them as a man should face them.”

The Duchess sighed.

“I am quite sure, Prince,” she said, “that you are a romanticist.  But, apart from the sentimental side of it, do things like this happen in your country?”

“Why not?” the Prince answered.  “It is as I have been saying:  for a worthy cause, or a cause which he believed to be worthy, there is no man of my country worthy of the name who would not accept death with the same resignation that he lays his head upon the pillow and waits for sleep.”

Sir Charles raised his glass and bowed across the table.

“To our great allies!” he said, smiling.

The Prince drank his glass of water thoughtfully.  He drank wine only on very rare occasions, and then under compulsion.  He turned to the Duchess.

“A few days ago,” he said, “I heard myself described as being much too serious a person.  Tonight I am afraid that I am living up to my reputation.  Our conversation seems to have drifted into somewhat gloomy channels.  We must ask Miss Morse, I think, to help us to forget.  They say,” he continued, “that it is the young ladies of your country who hold open the gates of Paradise for their menkind.”

He was looking into her eyes.  His tone was half bantering, half serious.  From across the table Penelope knew that Somerfield was watching her closely.  Somehow or other, she was irritated and nervous, and she answered vaguely.  Sir Charles intervened with a story about some of their acquaintances, and the conversation drifted into more ordinary channels.