"Is it? You--I must wait and see. I--I dreamed last night and it was of the sea, men rushing aboard a black battleship, rising and falling on great inky waves. It was good--so good--to dream that; not the other. Wait. . . . It is to be lived out. I am weak. . . . But there is a tide in the affairs of men--and women. Perhaps you--" She stopped abruptly. "Let us drive out of here, Mr. Armitage. Here, in this pure, wonderful place I feel almost like Sheynstone's Jessie." "What do you mean?" he asked sharply. She smiled. "Not what you thought I meant," she said gently. "Now, drive away, please." As they returned to the house, Mr. Wellington and his friend were alighting from the touring car; Koltsoff was not with them. As soon as he saw his daughter, Mr. Wellington, whose face was flushed, called Anne to him. "Say, Anne," he said, "is that Prince of yours a lunatic? Or what is he? "Why, no, father. Of course not. Why do you ask?" "Well, then, if he is n't crazy he is a plain, ordinary, damned fool. He was like a chicken with his head off all the afternoon, calling up on the telephone, sending telegrams, and then, between pauses, telling me he would have to leave right after the ball for Europe and wanting us all to sail with him. Then, at the last minute, some whiskered tramp came to the porch where we were sitting and the first thing I knew he had excused himself for the evening and was going off up the street with that hobo, both of them flapping their arms and exclaiming in each other's faces like a couple of candidates for a padded cell. Duke Ivan was a pill beside this man. And that is saying a whole lot, let me tell you." "Why, father!" exclaimed the girl. "I could cry! We are having that dinner for him to-night, and--and oh--" She rushed into the house and found her mother in her room. "Mother," she said, "Prince Koltsoff has gone off again! He was with father at the Reading Room and hurried away with a man, whom father describes as a tramp, saying he must be excused for the evening." "Very well," said Mrs. Wellington placidly; "we will have to have the play--without Hamlet, nevertheless." "But what shall I do?" "You might ask McCall." "Mother! Please! What can we do?" "Frankly, I don't know, Anne," said Mrs. Wellington. "I confess that this situation in all its ramifications has gone quite beyond me. It is altogether annoying. But let me prophesy: Koltsoff will not miss your dinner. He impresses me as a young man not altogether without brains--although they are of a sort." Mrs. Wellington was right. Koltsoff put in an appearance in time to meet Anne's guests, but the Russian bear at the height of his moulting season--or whatever disagreeable period he undergoes--is not more impossible than was Prince Koltsoff that night. CHAPTER XXII THE BALL BEGINS