He asked Triona to lunch the next day, and under the warmth of his kindly sympathy Triona expanded. He spoke of his boyhood in Moscow, where his father, a naturalized Russian, carried on business as a stockbroker; of his travels in England and France with his English mother; of his English tutor; of his promising start in life in a great Russian motor firm—an experience that guaranteed his livelihood during his late refuge months in London; of his military service; of his early war days as a Russian officer; of the twists of circumstance that sent him into the Imperial Secret Service; of incredible wanderings to the frontiers of Thibet; of the Revolution; of the murder of father and mother and the disappearance of his fortune like a wisp of cloud evaporated by the sun; of many strange and woeful things related in his book; of his escape through Russia; of his creeping as a stowaway into a Swedish timber boat; of his torpedoing by a German submarine and his rescue by a British destroyer; of his landing naked save for shirt and trousers, sans money, sans papers, sans everything of value save his English speech; of the Russian Society in London’s benevolent aid; of the burning desire, an irresistible flame, to set down on paper all that he had gone through; of the intense nights spent over the book in his tiny ramshackle room over the garage; and, lastly, of the astounding luck that had been dealt him by the capricious Wheel of Fortune. In the presence of a sympathetic audience he threw aside the previous evening’s cloak of modest impersonality. He talked with a vivid picturesqueness that held Olifant spellbound. The furtive look in his eyes disappeared. They gleamed like compelling stars. His face lost its ruggedness, transfigured by the born narrator’s inspiration. Olifant’s sister, Mrs. Woolcombe, a gentle and unassuming woman on whom the learning of Oxford had weighed as heavily as the abominable conduct of her husband, listened with the rapt attention of a modern Desdemona. She gazed at him open eyed, half stupefied as she had gazed lately at a great cinematograph film which had held all London breathless. When he had gone she turned to her brother, still under the spell. “The boy’s a magician.” Blaise Olifant smiled. “The boy’s a man,” said he. * * * * *