Lorry laughed at his apparent fervor, but was glad that he had confided in his energetic countryman.  Two heads were better than one, and he was forced to admit to himself that he rather liked the idea of company in the undertaking.  Not that he expected to encounter any particular difficulty, but that he saw a strange loneliness ahead.  Therefore he welcomed his friend’s avowed intention to accompany him to Edelweiss as a relief instead of an annoyance.  Until late in the night they discussed the coming trip, Anguish finally startling him with a question, just as he was stretching himself preparatory to the walk to his hotel.

“What are you going to do with her after you find her, Gren, old man?”

Grenfall’s brow puckered and he brought himself up with a jerk, puzzled uncertainty expressing itself in his posture as well as in his face.

“I’ll think about that after I have found her,” he replied.

“Think you’ll marry her?” persisted the other.

“How do I knew?” exclaimed the woman hunter, savagely.

“Oh, of course you don’t know—­how could you?” apologized Anguish.  “Maybe she won’t have you—­maybe she is married—­all sorts of contingencies, you know.  But, if you’ll pardon my inquisitiveness, I’d like to ask why you are making this wild goose chase half around the world? just to have another look at her?”

“You asked me if I thought—­” Here he stopped.

“I take it for granted, then, that you’d like to.  Well, I’m glad that I’ve got something definite on which to base operations.  The one object of our endeavors, from now on, is to exchange Guggenslocker for Lorry—­certainly no robbery.  A charity, I should say.  Good-night!  See you in the morning.”

The next morning the two friends took a cab to several railway stations and inquired about Graustark and Edelweiss.

“She was stringing you, old man,” said Anguish, after they had turned away from the third station.  He spoke commiseratingly, as he really felt sorry.

“No!” exclaimed Lorry.  “She told me the truth.  There is a Graustark and she lives there.  I’ll stake my life on those eyes of hers.”

“Are you sure she said it was in Europe?” asked Harry, looking up and down the street as if he would not have been surprised to see her in Paris.  In his heart he believed that she and her precious relatives had deceived old Gren.  Perhaps their home was in Paris, and nowhere else.  But for Lorry’s positiveness he would have laughed heartily at the other’s simple credulity, or branded him a dolt, the victim of some merry actress’s whim.  Still, he was forced to admit, he was not in a position to see matters as they appeared, and was charitable enough to bide his time and to humor the faith that was leading them from place to place in the effort to find a land that they knew nothing about.  Lorry seemed so sure, so positive, that he was loath to see his dream dispelled, his ideal shattered.  There was certainly no Graustark; neither had the Guggenslockers sailed on the Wilhelm, all apparent evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.  Lorry had been in a delirium and had imagined he saw her on the ship.  If there, why was not her name in the list?  But that problem tortured the sanguine searcher himself.