The Lighted Match

Pagratide, at Cara's elbow, was silent, respecting her silence.

When at last the two had the deck to themselves and Manhattan had become

a shadowy and ragged monotone, she turned and smiled. It was a smile of

accepting the inevitable. He went with her to the forward deck where

her staterooms were situated, and left her there in silence.

Von Ritz, standing apart near the threshold of the smokeroom, heard his

name paged almost before the speaker had entered the door, and turned to

take from the hand of the bearer a Marconigram just relayed from shore.

He read it and for an instant a look of pain crossed the features that

rarely yielded to expression. Then he sought out Karyl's stateroom.

Karyl turned wearily from the wintry picture of a sullenly heaving sea,

to answer the rap on the door. His face did not brighten as he

recognized Von Ritz.

The Colonel was that type of being upon whom men may depend or whom they

must fear. Whenever there was need, Karyl had come to know that there

would be Von Ritz, but also there went with him an austerity and an

impersonality that robbed him of the gratitude and love he might have

claimed.

Now there was a note almost surly in the expression with which the

Prince looked up to greet his father's confidential representative.

"Well?" he demanded.

For answer the officer held out the message.

Karyl puckered his brows over the intricacies of the code and handed it

back.

"Be good enough to construe it," he commanded.

"The King," said Von Ritz, "is ill. His Majesty wishes to instruct you

in certain matters before--" He broke off with something like a catch in

his voice, then continued calmly. "Recovery is despaired of, though

death may not be immediate."

Karyl turned away, not wishing the soldier to see the tears he felt in

his eyes, and Von Ritz discreetly withdrew as far as the door. There he

paused, and after a moment's hesitation inquired: "Her Highness goes to Maritzburg--to her father's Court--I presume?"

With his back still turned, the Prince nodded. "Why?" he demanded.

"Because--the message holds no hope--" Von Ritz paused, then added

quietly "--and if Your Highness is called upon to mount the throne, it

is advisable to hasten the marriage."

He backed out, closing the door behind him.

In her own cabin the girl had bolted the door. At the small desk of her

suite-de-luxe she sat with her head on her crossed arms. For a

half-hour she remained motionless.

Finally she rose and, with uncertain hands, opened a suitcase, drawing

from its place among filmy fabrics and feminine essentials a small,

squat figure of time-corroded clay. The little Inca huaca had perhaps

looked with that same unseeing squint upon Princesses of other

dynasties so long dead that their heartbreaks and ecstasies were now the

same--nothing.