It will be days, also nights (worse luck, for my cabin chirps like a cricket, sings like a canary, and does a separate realistic imitation of each animal in the Zoo ), before we get to New York. But I have crochet cramp and worsted wrist from finishing a million scarfs since we sailed, so I feel it will ease the strain to begin a letter to you. I dare say, anyhow, I shan't close it till the last minute, with a P. S. to say we're arriving safely-if we do One never knows nowadays.

If I didn't tell this, nobody else ever would; certainly not Diana, nor Major Vandyke-still less Eagle himself-I mean Captain Eagleston March; and they and I are the only ones who know, except a few such people as presidents and secretaries of war and generals, who never tell anything even under torture. Besides, there is the unofficial part. Without that, the drama would be like a play in three acts, with the first and third acts chopped off. The presidents and secretaries of war and generals know nothing about the unofficial part.

Long shadows of late afternoon lay straight and thin across the garden path; shadows of beech trees that ranged themselves in an undeviating line, like an inner wall within the convent wall of brick; and the soaring trees were very old, as old perhaps as the convent itself, whose stone had the same soft tints of faded red and brown as the autumn leaves which sparsely jewelled the beeches' silver.

"Hullo, old chap Who would ever have thought of seeing you here to-night? What's brought you back to civilisation again?" I turned suddenly, surprised by the sound of a familiar voice in my ear. It was the night of Christmas Eve, and I was just entering the lobby of the St. James's, the first time, as it happened, I had seen the inside of a theatre for two years.

Even when Annesley Grayle turned out of the Strand toward the Savoy she was uncertain whether she would have courage to walk into the hotel. With each step the thing, the dreadful thing, that she had come to do, loomed blacker. It was monstrous, impossible, like opening the door of the lions' cage at the Zoo and stepping inside.

"I wonder who will tell her," I heard somebody say, just outside the arbour. The somebody was a woman; and the somebody else who answered was a man. "Glad it won't be me " he replied, ungrammatically. I didn't know who these somebodies were, and I didn't much care. For the first instant the one thing I did care about was, that they should remain outside my arbour, instead of finding their way in. Then, the next words waked my interest. They sounded mysterious, and I loved mysteries-then.

IF Angel Odell hadn't had a French nursery governess, and if that French governess hadn't suddenly recognized her lost lover in a wounded French sergeant on the sea-front, the Valois story would have been a Christmas tragedy instead of-what it turned out to be. This was strange, because neither the little American girl nor her governess nor her governess's lover had ever heard of the Valois family, nor had the Valois family heard of them. But most things that happen are strange, if seen from every point of view.

No," said the Princess. "No. I'm-dashed if I do." "My darling child " exclaimed the Grand Duchess. "You're impossible. If any one should hear you " "It's he who's impossible," the Princess amended. "I'm just trying to show you-" "Or to shock me. You are so like your grandmother."

"Motor to Biarritz? You must be mad," said Dick Waring. "Why?" I asked; though I knew why as well as he. "A nice way to receive an invitation." "If you must know, it's because the King of Spain will be there, visiting his English fiancee," Dick answered. "I wish him happiness," said I. "I hear he's a fine young fellow. Why isn't there room in Biarritz for the King and for me?" "The detectives won't think there is, nor will they give you credit for your generous sentiments," said Dick."

"Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, To the silent wilderness." -Percy Bysshe Shelley. "To your happiness," I said, lifting my glass, and looking the girl in the eyes. She had the grace to blush, which was the least that she could do, for a moment ago she had jilted me. The way of it was this.