But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was _en route_ for her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She held it out to Bulstrode and said: "It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the King?" Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on his face. "Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it. Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par excellence--the King seemed to have many friends---and the poor little woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence in a stranger--her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven--where were _her_ friends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined to help in spite of themselves." "Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be _your_ friend. Women need friends ... even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...." He waited and dared--"Carmen-Magda's friend?" His innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm. "Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said. He winced. "Of course--but I mean from now on----" She nodded sweetly. "_Cela va sans dire_, Gresthaven." "Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me." She laughed. "You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to ask her: "What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the King to waylay you and stop your flight_!" But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition with a word of disbelief. "Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?" She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis were real to her at last: "He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."