“My own affairs are less complex,” Nigel replied.  “I am going to ask Naida to marry me—­to-night if I have the opportunity.”

Maggie made a little grimace.

“There goes my second string!” she exclaimed.  “Nigel, you are horribly callous.  I have never been in the least sure that I haven’t wanted to marry you myself.”

Nigel lit a cigarette and pushed the box across to his companion.

“I’ve frequently felt the same way,” he confessed.  “The trouble of it is that when the really right person comes along, one hasn’t any doubt about it whatever.  I should have made you a stodgy husband, Maggie.”

She sniffed.

“I think that considering the way you’ve flirted with me,” she declared, “you ought at least to have given me the opportunity of refusing you.”

“If Naida refuses me,” he began—­

“And I decide that Asia is too far away,” she interrupted—­

“We may come together, after all,” he said, with a resigned little sigh.

“Glib tongue and empty heart,” she quoted.  “Nigel, I would never trust you.  I believe you’re in love with Naida.”

“And I’m not quite so sure about you,” he observed, watching the colour rise quickly in her cheeks.  “Off with you to dress, young woman.  It’s past seven, and we must be there early.  I still have the wine to order.”

The dinner party was in its way a complete success.  Prince Karschoff was there, benign and distinguished; Chalmers and one or two other young men from the American Embassy.  There was a sprinkling of Maggie’s girl friends, a leaven of the older world in Nigel’s few intimates,—­and Naida, very pale but more beautiful than ever in a white velvet gown, her hair brushed straight back, and with no jewellery save one long rope of pearls.  Nigel who in his capacity as host had found little time for personal conversation during the service of dinner, deliberately led her a little apart when they passed out into the lounge for coffee and to watch the dancing.

“My duties are over for a time,” he said.  “Do you realise that I have not had a word with you alone since our luncheon at Ciro’s?”

“We have all been a little engrossed, have we not?” she murmured.  “I hope that you are satisfied with the way things have turned out.”

“Nothing shall induce me to talk politics or empire-saving to-night,” he declared, with a smile.  “I have other things to say.”

“Tell me why you asked us all to dine so suddenly,” she enquired.  “I do not know whether it is my fancy, but there seems to be an air of celebration about.  Is there any announcement to be made?”

He shook his head.

“None.  The party was just a whim of Maggie’s.”

They both looked across towards the ballroom, where she was dancing with Chalmers.

“Maggie is very beautiful to-night,” Naida said.  “I could scarcely listen to my neighbour’s conversation at dinner time for looking at her.  Yet she has the air all the time of living in a dream, as though something had happened which had lifted her right away from us all.  I began to wonder,” she added, “whether, after all, Oscar Immelan had not told me the truth, and whether we should not be drinking her health and yours before the evening was over.”