in Manchuria; and to this very day England and Japan are wondering
how it happened; not his being there, mind you, but the result. Rich,
that is to say independent; unmarried, that is to say unattached;
free to come and go, he stood high up in that great army of the
czar's, which I call the uncredited diplomatic corps, because the
phrase "secret service" always puts into my mind a picture of the
wild-eyed, bearded anarchist, whom I most heartily detest.

What this remarkable diplomatic free-lance did in Washington was
honestly done in the interests of his country. A Russ understands
honor in the rough, but he lacks all those delicate shadings which
make the word honor the highest of all words in the vocabularies of
the Gaul and the Saxon. And while I do not uphold him in what he did,
I can not place much blame at the count's door. Doubtless, in his
place, and given his cast of mind, I might have done exactly as he
did. Russia never asks how a thing is done, but why it is _not_
done. Ah, these Aspasias, these Circes, these Calypsos, these
Cleopatras, with their blue, their gray, their amber eyes! I have my
doubts concerning Jonah, but, being a man, I am fully convinced as to
the history of Eve. And yet, the woman in this case was absolutely
innocent of any guile, unless, a pair of eyes as heavenly blue as a
rajah's sapphire may be called guile.

Pardon me this long parenthesis. By this time, no doubt, Mr. Robert
has entered the restaurant We shall follow him rather than this
aimless train of thought.

Mr. Robert's appetite, for a healthy young man, was strangely
incurious. He searched the menu from top to bottom, and then from
bottom to top; nothing excited his palate. Whenever persons entered,