“I want you to tell me all you know about him,” said the princess in her brisk way.  “He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have not grown old too.  And, of course, one wonders why.  He is the sort of person who might do anything surprising.  He might fall in love and marry, or something like that, you know.  Papa says he is married already, and his wife is in a mad asylum.  He says there is a tragedy.  But I don’t.  He has no wife—­unless he has two.”

“I know nothing of that side of his life.  I only know his career.”

“I do not care about his career,” said the princess, lightly.  “I go deeper than careers.”

She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay, blue eyes.

“A man’s career is only the surface of his life.”

“Then some men’s lives are all surface,” said Cartoner.

Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.

“Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse,” she replied.

Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this girl, who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly clear and decisive views upon it.

“What would you have them do beyond going on when required and stopping when expedient—­and avoiding collisions?” he inquired.

“I should like them to break the omnibus up occasionally,” she answered, “and take a wrong turning sometimes, just to see if a little happiness lay that way.”

“Yes,” he laughed.  “You are a Pole and a Bukaty.  I knew it as soon as I saw you.”

“One must do something.  We were talking of such things last night, and Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an infinite patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness.”

“Now you have come down to a mere career again,” said Cartoner.

“Not necessarily.”

The prince came into the room again at this moment.

“What are you people discussing,” he asked, “so gravely?”

He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him, for he had been young when it was the fashion in Poland to be French.

“I do not quite know,” answered Cartoner, slowly.  “The princess was giving me her views.”

“I know,” retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh.  “They are long views, those views of hers.”

Cartoner was still standing near the window.  He turned absently and looked out, down into the busy street.  There he saw something which caused him intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any man of strong purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of thoughtful attention.  He saw Captain Cable, of the Minnie, crossing the street, having just quitted the hotel.  This was the business acquaintance of Prince Bukaty’s, who had come to speak of jettison.

Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill.  He had seen war waged before now with material which had passed in and out of the Minnie’s hatches.