"Good; every one writes letters--an excellent thing to do. I gave your name to an avid-eyed band of reporters, as one of those sailing with me. You will be a person of some importance in the tangled affairs to which I am taking you; it is just as well to prepare." "I have no desire to be curious," Allard began tentatively. "But you naturally would like to know what is happening. Indeed, it is necessary that you know." He paused an instant. "Do you recall what I said to you last night of my country, of its intrigue and wrong and lack of faith?" "Yes." The shadows deepened across the fine dark face. Watching Stanief, it seemed to Allard as if the rose-hued salon lost a little of its brightness also, as if both man and room remembered hours not happy. "All my life I have walked in the shadow of one man's hate," Stanief said quietly. "I have known it watching greedily for my least indiscretion, heard its wild-beast breathing as it crouched beside me in the dark, stepped cautiously to avoid the snares it spread for me. Unable to touch me openly unless I myself stooped from inherited safety, my enemy has employed every secret artifice to lure me into reach, every petty goad to sting me to a moment's forgetfulness. I never have taken a friend, conscious that one would be forced to betrayal if not already planning it. I learned long ago that the bright-eyed, fragile ladies of the court were not for me to trust. Living in the center of a dazzling pageant, the focus of a dazzling hate, I have had just one hope to carry with me. Not a pleasant hope, but it is about to be fulfilled. My enemy is dying." "The Emperor--" "Exactly." Allard remained silent, understanding Vasili better now. Stanief rose and walked to the window, gazing out over the tumbling field of water. When he returned it was with a touch of scarlet burning in his clear cheek. "Before I started on this voyage, taken at his command," he said, "I bade farewell to my imperial uncle. Ill, grimly and helplessly conscious of the ultimate end, he looked up from his pillows at me. 'Your day is coming,' he declared. 'I know how long your regency will last, how completely my son will be left your toy and victim. But I shall wait on the threshold of the next world, Feodor Stanief, until you come and I see your punishment. Now go.' It was the confession of failure, the laying down of the cards, the first frankness between us." The two men looked at each other. "I am probably Regent now," Stanief added. Allard's eyes did not leave the other's; no doubt clouded the unwavering confidence of his regard. "'A Stanief guards his own'," he quoted. "If I were the little prince, I should have no fear, monseigneur." Stanief lifted his head, the sunlight flashed back to the room before his expression. "Thank you," he answered proudly. "And from emperor to peasant I could find no one else to grant me so much." "But--I do not understand." "Then you have not read our history."