He interrupted.  “You do not love me now.  Why?  You told me you loved me, in the park, yesterday.  I am a poor artist, that is the reason.”

This speech he uttered glibly, and, despite the extraordinary pronunciation, she understood it.  She took his long hand, the fingers amazed her.  He bent them back until they touched his wrist, and was proud of their flexibility.  He walked to the dining-table and tossed its cover-cloth on a chair.  Upon his two thumbs he went around it like an acrobat.  “Shall I hold you out with one arm?” he softly asked.  Lora was vastly amused; this was indeed a courtship out of the ordinary—­it pleased her exotic taste.

“Hungarian gypsies are very strong, are they not?” she innocently asked.

“I am not gypsy nor am I Hungarian; I am an East Indian.  My family is royal.  We are of the Rajpoot tribes called Ranas.  My father once ruled Roorbunder.”

Lora was amazed.  A king’s son, a Rana of Roorbunder!  She became very sympathetic.  Again she urged him to sit down.

“My nation never sits before a woman,” he proudly answered.

“But I will sit beside you,” she coaxed, pushing him to a corner.  He resisted her and went to the window.  Lora again joined him.  The man piqued her.  He was mysterious and very unlike Mr. Steyle—­poor, sentimental Clarence, who melted with sighs if she but glanced at him; and then, Clarence was too stout.  She adored slender men, believing that when fat came in at the door love fled out of the window.

“They put me in a circus at Buda-Pesth,” remarked Arpad Vihary, as if he were making a commonplace statement about the weather.

She gave a little scream; he regarded her with Oriental composure.  “In a circus!  You!  Did you ride?”

“I cannot ride,” he said.  “I played in a cage all day.”

“Because you were wild?” She then went into a fit of laughter.  He was such a funny fellow, though his ardent gaze made her blush.  So blond and pink was Lora that her friends called her Strawberry—­a delicate compliment in which she delighted.  It was this golden head and radiant face, with implacably blue eyes, that set the blood pumping into Arpad’s brain.  When he looked at her, he saw sunlight.

“Do you know, you absurd prince, that when you played the Czardas the other night I seemed to see a vision of a Hungarian prairie, covered with fighting centaurs and satyrs!  I longed to be a vivandiere among all those fauns.  You were there—­in the music, I mean—­and you were big Pan—­oh, so ugly and terrible!”

“Pan!  That is a Polish title,” he answered quite simply.

“Stupid!  The great god Pan—­don’t you know your mythology?  Haven’t you read Mrs. Browning?  He was the god of nature, of the woods.  Even now, I believe you have ears with furry tips and hoofs like a faun.”

He turned a sickly yellow.

“Anyhow, why did they put you in a cage?  Were you a wild boy?”