should have returned thus, spying upon her; but she found it difficult to be angry with the young prince of Helium. 

 What mad caprice could have induced him so to transgress the etiquette of nations? For lesser things great powers had gone to war. 

 The princess in her was shocked and angered—but what of the girl! 

 And the guard—what of them? Evidently they, too, had been so much surprised by the unprecedented action of the stranger that they had not even challenged; but that they had no thought to let the thing go unnoticed was quickly evidenced by the skirring of motors upon the landing stage and the quick shooting airward of a long-lined patrol boat. 

 Thuvia watched it dart swiftly eastward. So, too, did other eyes watch. 

 Within the dense shadows of the skeel grove, in a wide avenue beneath o’erspreading foliage, a flier hung a dozen feet above the ground. From its deck keen eyes watched the far-fanning searchlight of the patrol boat. No light shone from the enshadowed craft. Upon its deck was the silence of the tomb. Its crew of a half-dozen red warriors watched the lights of the patrol boat diminishing in the distance. 

 “The intellects of our ancestors are with us to-night,” said one in a low tone. 

 “No plan ever carried better,” returned another. “They did precisely as the prince foretold.” 

 He who had first spoken turned toward the man who squatted before the control board. 

 “Now!” he whispered. There was no other order given. Every man upon the craft had evidently been well schooled in each detail of that night’s work. Silently the dark hull crept beneath the cathedral arches of the dark and silent grove. 

 Thuvia of Ptarth, gazing toward the east, saw the blacker blot against the blackness of the trees as the craft topped the buttressed garden wall. She saw the dim bulk incline gently downward toward the scarlet sward of the garden. 

 She knew that men came not thus with honourable intent. Yet she did not cry aloud to alarm the near-by guardsmen, nor did she flee to the safety of the palace. 

 Why? 

 I can see her shrug her shapely shoulders in reply as she voices the age-old, universal answer of the woman: Because! 

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