“Wait,” said the late King of Galavia.  “I have come here to talk with you, Benton, in a way which is unspeakably hard.  Can you not make the same effort to lay aside passion that I am making?”

The American turned and paced the floor.

For a moment more there was the same embarrassed silence between them, then the Galavian continued, measuring his words, speaking with desperately studied effort to eliminate the feeling that struggled to the surface.

“You love my wife.”

“And shall,” replied the American in the same calculated, colorless voice, “while I live.”

“I, too,” said Pagratide.  “Therefore we must talk.”

“Wait.”  Benton raised a hand.  “If we are to talk at all along these lines, Pagratide, there is only one way in which it can be done.”

“And that is what?”

“That each of us, throughout, talks with only one thought in mind:  her happiness; that one strip aside all conventions and talk as two utterly naked souls might talk.”

“Of course,” said Karyl simply.  “Otherwise I should not have suggested it.”

“Then,” began Benton, “up to this point we are agreed.”

The King, despite his pallor, smiled.

“I’m afraid you still don’t understand me.  I haven’t come to murder you, or to invite murder, Benton.  It would not help.”

“You have just said that one of us is an interloper.  Presumably you have come to decide which one it is.”

Karyl shook his head.

“Benton, that point has been decided.  Not by you or me, but it is decided.”

“I don’t understand you,” admitted the American.

His visitor studied the few remaining lights in the garden beneath.

“I am no longer a King.  I am an outcast.  If I ever had a claim before God, it passed with my Crown.  I could hold her now only by brutality.  I told you I would free her and fight for her, but I saw her eyes to-night....  Benton, it is I who am the interloper!”

No answer came to Benton’s tongue.  Pagratide did not seem to expect one.  After a moment he went on, with the manner of one who had thought out what he was to say, and who compels himself to go through with the prepared recital.

“If there is no throne, I must eliminate myself....  But for the time being I have given Von Ritz my parole....  The game is not yet quite played out....  He and Cara agree that I must play it to the end.  After that there will be time to remedy mistakes.”  He paused.

“Pagratide,” said the American slowly, “you are talking wildly.  At all events, while everything impossible has happened to us, I think we can, after all shake hands.”

Karyl extended his own.

“I have spoken as I have,” he went on, “because it was necessary to be frank.  Meanwhile I must ask you to place me under yet another obligation.  There is one safe place for her.  Will you take us with you on the yacht, and cruise in unfrequented ports, until Von Ritz reports to me?”