"Good-bye, Englishman," he said, "I love you for your courage. Go in peace," he went on, shaking him by the hand, but ignoring Von Hügelweiler altogether. "But take heed to yourself, for you are pitting yourself against a man who is neither wholly sane nor wholly mad, and therefore entirely to be feared. Good-bye, and tell the Jew Meyer that to-night I am dwelling in the Goose-market, at the house of Fritz Birnbaum, the cobbler. Let him send to take me and see whether he is stronger than my dear allies, Archmedai and Ahriman." "I will make a point of doing so," said Saunders, preparing to depart, "and I will lay a shade of odds on the Jew." CHAPTER ELEVEN THE IRON MAIDEN While the Englishman was ski-running and saving the King's life, the American had spent an uneventful morning seeing the sights of the capital. Acting on his friend's advice he had visited the Reichs Museum, wherein were housed some extremely old Masters, some indifferent modern sculpture, and a wholly admirable collection of engravings by Albrecht Dürer. But Trafford's mind had wandered from pre-Raphaelite anatomy and marble modernities to a pair of dark eyes, a finely chiselled little nose, and a diminutive mouth, that were utterly unlike anything depicted by Botticelli, Fra Angelo, or the great Bavarian engraver. Art had never held an important place in his mind, and on this fine January morning it competed feebly with a certain restless longing that had stolen over his ill-balanced nervous system, to the domination of his thoughts and the destruction of his critical faculties. He desired to be out in the open air, and he desired to see, and touch, and speak with a certain young woman who had passed herself off as his sister at his hotel, but who had disappeared into thin air long before he had tasted his _petit déjeuner_ of coffee and rolls. It was not, he told himself, that he was in love. Love,--as he conceived it,--was something akin to worship, a regard pure as the snows, passionless almost in its humility and reverence. For one woman he had felt that marvellous adoration; he would never feel it again for any woman in the world. But beauty appeals even to those who have suffered at beauty's hands, and the Princess Gloria was a maiden of such bewildering moods, so compounded of laughter and fierceness, of such human pathos and relentless purpose, that she was bound to have a disturbing effect on so responsive and sensitive a soul as his. He acknowledged the obsession, for it was patent and paramount. But he told himself that in his regard there were no deeps, certainly no worship; merely a desire to cultivate an attractive young woman whose habitual behaviour was as heedless of the conventions as his own.