“Well, he’s the next thing to it, isn’t he?” inquired her brother helplessly. “Don’t be absurd, J. P. He is the descendant of kings and potentates and mighty warriors and he’s quite the most fascinating man I’ve ever met. To know him is a privilege. He calls to your soul and bids you voyage with him to the heights where you can leave behind you the petty affairs of life and commune with the eternal and the unknowable.” “Oh, bunk,” retorted her brother testily. “You give me a pain. The heights, eh? If you take a trip up there you’d better be sure before you start that you’ve got a return ticket. You’re likely to get all tangled up in the cosmos and the eternal and lose your way as well as your mind. And take a tip from me, old lady. Choose some other companion besides that coffee colored harem keeper if you want to keep your friends.” “My dear brother,” returned Miss Fannie, in a perfectly even tone of voice. “I feel extremely sorry for you. You are of the earth earthy. You have no soul. When the infinite calls you cannot hear it. I, fortunately, am so attuned and delicately adjusted that it reaches me, and I can pulsate in harmony with its vibrations. I know because the dear prince told me so. It’s just wonderful.” “Oh——piffle,” retorted J. P. impotently as he threw up his hands in a gesture of hopeless despair and tore angrily out of the room with the bitter realization that he had once more suffered defeat. Miss Fannie Easton smiled indulgently and fondled a jade ring on her left hand, a ring which Prince Rajput Singh had slipped from his own royal finger and given her with the whispered expression of a hope that she would wear it as a token of their friendship. Assuring herself that no one was looking she kissed it long and ardently as something akin to a rapturous look crept into her foolish, lusterless eyes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter Twenty-Eight Jimmy Martin, couchant on a chaise longue in the royal suite of the Congress Hotel, had difficulty in persuading himself that he was wide awake and in full possession of all his senses. Opposite him sat the pseudo prince Rajput Singh in his shirt-sleeves, looking decidedly unromantic. The East Indian was talking rapidly and the inner import of the tale he was unfolding was of such a nature that Jimmy was aquiver with eager curiosity and aglow with anticipatory delight. He did not notice that the other’s eyes glinted unpleasantly as he spoke and that there was something positively repulsive about the smugly complacent manner in which he detailed the progress of his love affair with the wealthy sister of Junius P. Easton. All Jimmy could think of at the moment were the tremendous publicity possibilities inherent in the culmination of this incongruous romance.