"You dear!" she exclaimed. "Oh, how weary I am of it! Nearly a week in the train! And how well you are looking! And I am not going to stay a single second bothering about luggage. Marie, give the porter my dressing-case. Here are the keys. You can see to everything." Norgate, carried almost off his feet by the delight of her welcome, led her away towards a taxicab. "I am starving," she told him. "I would have nothing at Dover except a cup of tea. I knew that you would meet me, and I thought that we would have our first meal in England together. You shall take me somewhere where we can have supper and tell me all the news. I don't look too hideous, do I, in my travelling clothes?" "You look adorable," he assured her, "and I believe you know it." "I have done my best," she confessed demurely. "Marie took so much trouble with my hair. We had the most delightful coupe all to ourselves. Fancy, we are back again in London! I have been to Italy, I have spoken to kings and prime ministers, and I am back again with you. And queerly enough, not until to-morrow shall I see the one person who really rules Italy." "Who is that?" he asked. "I am not sure that I shall tell you everything," she decided. "You have not opened your mouth to me yet. I shall wait until supper-time. Have you changed your mind since I went away?" "I shall never change it," he assured her eagerly. "We are in a taxicab and I know it's most unusual and improper, but--" "If you hadn't kissed me," she declared a moment later as she leaned forward to look in the glass, "I should not have eaten a mouthful of supper." They drove to the Milan Grill. It was a little early for the theatre people, and they were almost alone in the place. Anna drew a great sigh of content as she settled down in her chair. "I think I must have been lonely for a long time," she whispered, "for it is so delightful to get back and be with you. Tell me what you have been doing?" "I have been promoted," Norgate announced. "My prospective alliance with you has completed Selingman's confidence in me. I have been entrusted with several commissions." He told her of his adventures. She listened breathlessly to the account of his dinner in Soho. "It is queer how all this is working out," she observed. "I knew before that the trouble was to come through Austria. The Emperor was very anxious indeed that it should not. He wanted to have his country brought reluctantly into the struggle. Even at this moment I believe that if he thought there was the slightest chance of England becoming embroiled, he would travel to Berlin himself to plead with the Kaiser. I really don't know why, but the one thing in Austria which would be thoroughly unpopular would be a war with England." "Tell me about your mission?" he asked.