“He doesn’t look in the least Chinese,” she declared.

“I told you he didn’t,” Nigel replied.  “He was considered the best-looking man of his year up at Oxford.”

Maggie was unusually silent on their way back.

“It was perhaps scarcely worth our while, this little expedition of ours,” Maggie said thoughtfully.

“You’re not sorry that we came?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “I think not,” she replied.

“Why only ’think’?”

She roused herself with an effort.

“I don’t know, Nigel,” she confessed.  “I can’t imagine what is wrong with me.  I feel shivery—­nervous—­as though something were going to happen.”

He looked at her curiously.  This was a Maggie whom he scarcely recognised.

“Presentiments?” he asked.

“Absurd, isn’t it!” she replied, with a weak smile.  “I’ll get over it directly.  I don’t think I am going to like Prince Shan, Nigel.”

“Well, you haven’t been long making up your mind,” he observed.  “I shouldn’t have thought you had been able even to see his face.”

“I had a queer, lightning-like glimpse of it,” she reflected.  “To me it seemed as though it were carved out of granite, and as though all that was human about him were the mouth and the eyes.  I wish he hadn’t been looking.”

“Are you flattering yourself that he will recognise you?” Nigel asked.

“I know that he will,” she answered simply.

* * * * *

In a corner of the white-and-gold restaurant at the Ritz on the following evening, Prince Shan and Immelan dined tete-a-tete, Immelan in the best of spirits, talking of the pleasant trifles of the world, drinking champagne and pointing out notabilities; Prince Shan, his features and expression unchanging, and his face as white as the perfectly fitting shirt he wore.  His clothes were fashionable and distinctive, his black pearls unobtrusive but wonderful, his smoothly brushed dark hair, his immaculate finger nails, his skilfully tied tie all indicative of his close touch with western civilization.  There was nothing, in fact, except his sphinx-like expression, the slightly unusual shape of his brilliant eyes, and his queer air of personal detachment, to denote the Oriental.  He drank water, he ate sparingly, he preserved an almost unbroken silence, yet he had the air of one giving courteous attention to everything which his companion said and finding interest in it.  Only once he asked a question.

“You are well acquainted here, my host,” he said.  “You know the trio at the table just behind the entrance—­the attractive young lady with her chaperon, and a gentleman who I rather fancy must be an old college acquaintance whose name I have forgotten.  Tell me some more about them in their private capacity, and not as saviours of their country.”

Immelan frowned slightly as he glanced across the room.