“I’ve spoken the Truth, dear old friend,” said Paul.  “I’ve. got down to bed-rock to-night.  I have a deep and loyal affection for Jane.  I shan’t waver in it all my life long.  I’ll soon find my carrot, as she calls it—­it will be England’s greatness.  She is the woman that will help me on my path.  I’ve finished with illusions for ever and ever.  Jane is the bravest and grandest of realities.  To-night’s work has taught me that.  For me, Jane stands for the Truth.  Jane—­”

He turned to her, but she had risen from her chair, staring at a card which she held in her hand.  Her clear eyes met his for an instant as she threw the card on the table before him.  “No, dear.  For you, that’s the Truth.”

He took it up and looked at it stupidly.  It bore a crown and the inscription:  “The Princess Sophie Zobraska,” and a pencilled line, in her handwriting:  “With anxious inquiries.”  He reeled, as if someone had dealt him a heavy blow on the head.  He recovered to see Jane regarding him with her serene gravity.  “Did you know about this?” he asked dully.

“No.  I’ve just seen the card.  I found it at the bottom of the pile.”

“How did it come?”

Jane rang the bell.  “I don’t know.  If Annie’s still up, we can find out.  As it was at the bottom, it must have been one of the first.”

“How could the news have travelled so fast?” said Paul.

The maid came in.  Questioned, she said that just after Paul had gone upstairs, and while Jane was at the telephone, a chauffeur had presented the card.  He belonged to a great lighted limousine in which sat a lady in hat and dark veil.  According to her orders, she had said that Mr. Finn was dead, and the chauffeur had gone away and she had shut the door.

The maid was dismissed.  Paul stood on the hearthrug with bent brows, his hands in his jacket pockets.  “I can’t understand it,” he said.

“She must ha’ come straight from the Town Hall,” said Barney Bill.

“But she wasn’t there,” cried Paul.

“Sonny,” said the old fellow, “if you’re always dead sure of where a woman is and where a woman isn’t, you’re a wiser man than Solomon with all his wives and other domestic afflictions.”

Paul threw the card into the fire.  “It doesn’t matter where she was,” said he.  “It was a very polite—­even a gracious act to send in her card on her way home.  But it makes no difference to what I was talking about.  What have I got to do with princesses?  They’re out of my sphere.  So are Naiads and Dryads and Houris and Valkyrie and other fabulous ladies.  The Princess Zobraska has nothing to do with the question.”

He made a step towards Jane and, his hand on her shoulder, looked at her in his new, masterful way.  “I come in the most solemn hour and in the crisis of my life to ask you to marry me.  My father, whom I’ve only learned to love and revere to-night, is lying dead upstairs.  To-night I have cut away all bridges behind me.  I go into the unknown.  We’ll have to fight, but we’ll fight together.  You have courage, and I at least have that.  There’s a seat in Parliament which I’ll have to fight for afterwards like a dog for a bone, and an official position which brings in enough bread and-butter—­”