I was about to ask if she could be trusted when Gwendolyn continued:

"She is blind, dumb, and deaf." I looked at the amazing female in astonishment. "She is non-existent."

I was awed. Could she possibly be a creation of my subjective mind?

"She is the symbol of a sacred convention. She is always with me, ready to serve. You will notice that she is dressed in black, like the property-man in the Chinese drama, visible in theory, invisible in fact."

"You mean the other way around, don't you, Gwendolyn?"

"Are you thinking of getting married?"

"Of course. Every girl does."

"I mean concretely. Is there some one?"

"Mama and papa want me to marry the Chinless One. It's the ambition of their lives."

"The Chinless One!" I echoed.

"That 's my nickname for Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern. Have n't you seen him? Oh, he 's wonderful! His face ducks under his lower lip and runs down to meet his Adam's apple. His grandfather lost the Battle of Verdun, es

"Never," I said, with sincerity.

"Oh, yes, you will, when you see how beautifully it works. It simplifies everything. Her presence satisfies the theory and leaves me free as to the facts. I could n't let you make love to me if anything happened to Fräulein." "You mean I'll have to do it in front of her?"

"Of course. sons are chaperoned in Aristokia." "Oh, Lord!"

All our affairs and liai

"Royal princesses have two chaperons; the empress, three."

"In case one of them dies on the job?" "You put it so prettily."

For several seconds we walked on in silence; then I asked:

"Are n't you a royal princess?"

"Oh, no. My ancestors were English and American. Papa is Baron Wigleigh, but we have certain privileges because he is descended from George Boggs, who made all this possible," she said, with a wave of her hand that was meant to include all of Aristokia.

Boggs! Chewing gum! They associated themselves in my mind. Now I understood the coat of arms on the box at the opera and on her airplane, a luxuriant grove of rubber-trees, in the center of which stood a knight in shining armor, in his right hand held high a golden spear with diamond head, his left arm protectingly about a maiden coyly dressed in mint leaves. It had puzzled me considerably.

"I may become an empress by marriage, you know."

My heart sank.

He's

later surrendered to the Allies; but he has the bluest blood in Aristokia. the emperor-elect."

"And your parents want to sacrifice you you the most beautiful specimen in Aristokia to that-that product of a blight!" I was burning with indignation. "It's an outrage."

"I love your agricultural way of putting things, Jack."

"It is n't agriculture. It 's eugenics." "But that's just the point; that 's how I may be allowed to marry him. Heretofore Royal Blues have been allowed to marry only Royal Blues. Now there is a tremendous effort being made to change that, so that I may be the mother of kings."

"Don't!" I groaned.

Gwendolyn then explained to me at length that the German princesses, by a strange trick of nature, had been having an extraordinary proportion of male children, the just retribution for Wilhelm II's vain boast that the virile German race would quickly recover from the effects of the Great War by its wellknown habit of having an excess of male over female offspring. At that time only one princess of the royal blood was left, the Princess Sophia. She was anemic, and even more chinless than Willy. The learned doctors had shaken their heads dubiously at mention of the union, with grave fears for the future of the race.

As the result of this a political party had arisen which thought that expediency demanded an infusion of new blood in the person of Gwendolyn. The fight was at its height at that time.

"What does Willy say?" I asked. "He does n't care. He's a trifle queer."

"And you, Gwendolyn?"

"Oh, I keep an open mind in the daytime and look at the stars by night."

Just then the intruding female in the rear, whose presence I had actually forgotten, uttered a guttural sound of warning in German, and Gwendolyn turned to me with outstretched hand.

"Good-by, Mr. Smith. I must leave you now. Some one is coming. So put on your little wheels and roll away."

"Shall I see you again, Gwendolyn?" "If you have eyes, Jackie." She turned and left me.

I wanted to inhale the vision of her lithe young body as she strolled away with that marvelous, self-reliant gait of hers, sex-conscious and yet unconscious. What a woman! How tantalizingly she had mixed up her Jacks and Mr. Smiths. I was in that state of mind when every Jack meant "you are mine," and every Mr. Smith evoked the image of a cosmic capsule forever separating us. Would she turn at the curve of the path? She did not. And my last glimpse was not of her, but of her protector. I turned on the current and fled.

CHAPTER III

FOR nearly a week I kept my eyes open and looked in every direction, but I did not see Gwendolyn again.

I went every morning to the Bois Bourbon and sat in the shadow of Marie Antoinette and waited, feeding my waning hopes with the exquisite memories of that first and only meeting.

From my windows at the Hohenzollern I scanned the heavens and searched each passing airplane with my spyglass. Once I saw the Wigleigh coatof-arms emblazoned on outspread wings high above me. My heart jumped out to meet the whirling motor, but the occupants were Mama and Papa Wigleigh, and my heart sank back with a sickening thud.

In the afternoons I walked for hours about the endless gardens, parks, and boulevards until my legs ached and my eyes burned. The extraordinary color

fulness of the scene was a narcotic to my mental anguish, which dulled the pain of hopes deferred.

I threaded my way through the human throng, men and women of every race and color. Among them, here and there, was a sprinkling of Aristokians, easily distinguishable by the refinement of their features and their easy, graceful manner of walking, so different to our awkward, shackled strides, the result of a generation of dependence on auto-peds.

Almost all the male Aristokians wore uniforms. And such uniforms! What a contrast to the drab, unesthetic, utilitarian things worn by our International Police! All the colors of the spectrum seemed splashed in harmonious confusion upon the green and white background of parks and mansions. Nearly every officer's bosom (and they were all officers) was covered with a diversity of medals and decorations, and many wore silver, gold, and platinum spurs, which made a pleasant, clinking sound as they strode about.

The Aristokian ladies were all attractively dressed, but the styles were not unfamiliar to me, for at that time the women of the proletariate aped the fashions of Aristokia, which had taken the place of Paris in all such matters. I could not restrain my smiles at the sight of these fine birds flitting by, trailing their ungainly chaperons in black.

One afternoon when walking in a comparatively quiet lane in the Bois Bourbon, to which I always returned, drawn by the lodestone of my memories, I saw coming toward me a very beautiful young woman, followed by a perfectly enormous hulk in black. By no possible flight of mental gymnastics could this chaperon have been imagined invisible. She utterly overwhelmed her petite and dainty charge. The incongruity of the spectacle was too much for me. I think I laughed out loud. any rate, I smiled broadly. Suddenly I realized that the young lady had paused in front of me and was smiling invitingly. Confusion seized me; my grin froze, and I fled. To be arrested for any one but Gwendolyn would be absurd.

At

After that I kept my smiles to myself, but I gradually came to the conclusion that the law regarding non-intercourse with the Nobodies was one more honored in the breach than the observance.

This little episode set me to thinking. What was it that made forbidden fruit so exquisite? Why did we almost instinctively desire that which prohibitory mandates placed beyond our reach? The legend of Eve and the applè acquired a new significance in my eyes. It became at that moment the very keynote of human nature. Is not the unobtainable the supreme desire of each one of us, and does not the race progress in direct ratio to our efforts to achieve the impossible? At adolescence our dreams are illimitable. The attainments of even the greatest of us are only an infinitesimal part of our youthful ambitions. Therein lies the measure of our slow ad

vance.

inchoate England and America and had made them efficient in self-defense. And then? What had the years between 1919 and 1925 done to us? What a vast collective sin must now be expiated!

On the personal plane I found myself, fresh from the land of prohibitions, like many another tourist seeking relaxation, assuaging the confusion of my

mental state by an assiduous sampling of alcoholic beverI took copi

ages. ous drafts of claret, burgundy, sauterne, champagne, port, and sherry. How many there were, each with its distinctive taste, aroma, and effect! I sipped strangely elating things called cordials, sweet, oily, burning liquids named after gentlemen who had consecrated their lives to celibacy and the Deity. It was a fascinating experience to one whose only previous knowledge of alcohol had been in the form of Kansas City Near-Beer, Bolivia (the quack remedy for all human ills), and Kentucky moonshine whisky, the unpalatable curses of our world. I found that after partaking of these beverages I became infused with something extraneous to me, a new courage, a new hope, and a conviction that on the morrow I would see Gwendolyn.

My mind rambled on as I walked about. Then, watching the Aristokians, I began to think more concretely about the problem of personal liberty. In Aristokia, the very name of which is only a derivative of aristocracy, though there were absurd rules, like the chaperons in black, they had been reduced by the process of conventionalizing to practical desuetude. The young ladies went blithely on their way, smiling at me when they chose, thoroughly chaperoned. It was only one item in a long list. Yet in my world the proletariate, in the name of universal freedom, was exercising a tyranny unknown in former years. What had become of the great Anglo-Saxon ideal of personal liberty? German efficiency had attacked

Exactly a week after my meeting with her I sat at a table in the Café Louis Quatorze. I had dined not wisely, but too well, and was sipping a new cordial in abject loneliness. I felt strangely fraternal, rosily elated. I wanted to talk. I had tried the resources of my wit and wisdom on the waiter, but he persisted in answering "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to my every

comment, making a genuine conversation extremely difficult. He left me to get my check, and I looked about me, smiling.

A few meters away sat a nice young chap looking as lonely as I. Suddenly I realized that I had been playing with a little box of my detestable capsules, which I had in an absent-minded moment taken out of my pocket. I took a capsule, poised it on my knife, and snapped back the blade. The capsule described a beautiful curve through the air and splashed contentedly into the young chap's glass of champagne. He cocked an eye over it in a contemplative manner. I laughed. And being delighted with my aim, I repeated the performance. The second one hit him on the nose. He turned and looked at me.

park and garden, to every place of interest, was a dollar or more. Along the boulevards there were frequent toll-gates through which tourists could. pass only by the payment of a dollar. Every one had to be tipped. It was appalling. At the casino, I vowed, we would make a killing, and recoup our expenses. The possibility of losing never occurred to either of us. We were not men in the mood to admit the co-existence with us of failure in any form. So we sallied forth in high spirits.

The admission to the casino was twenty-five dollars a head. We matched for it, and I lost. The main salon was a vast place done somewhat in the manner of the great ball-room at Versailles, richly carpeted, so that every footfall was muffled into silence. From the

lish.

"I'm lonely," I replied.

Whereat he arose and came over to me. We shook hands, and he sat down. He explained to me that he had been arrested that day and fined for speaking to some one on the boulevard.

"They fined me a hundred dollars for talking to an Aristokian, and a hundred dollars more for calling him mister when he happened to be a baron."

I sympathized, and paid for the drinks.

My new friend's name was Frank Hyde. He was a member of the Civic Board for the Improvement of Public Morals in Benton, Nebraska.

After we had paid our checks and slightly recovered from the staggering blow they dealt us, we decided that excitement was in order. Hyde opined that a visit to a wild Hungarian café was the thing. I voted for the casino, and won him over.

My reasons for favoring the casino were twofold. In the first place, I might see Gwendolyn there, though of this I said nothing to Hyde. In the second place, and it was this argument I used with effect on him,-the high cost of living in Aristokia was ruining us. The dinner I had just eaten had cost me twenty-five dollars. My room at the Hohenzollern was fifteen dollars a day. The admission to every

mendous electroliers, so placed as to shed their radiance on the hundred or more tables. It was a blessed relief to one accustomed, as I was, to vague, diffused, and indirect lighting systems to see real glowing, warm lights. The smoke from countless cigarettes hung in gently undulating veils of blue, which accentuated the stupendous size of the room and gave a sense of mysterious remoteness to the scene. The air was filled with a multiplicity of sounds. The incessant clink of coins, the rustle of paper money, the scraping of the croupiers, and their droning voices intoning the eternal "Faites vos jeux, Messieurs!" mingled in a mighty harmony with the buzz of a thousand voices speaking in a key of suppressed excitement. The salon and all that it expressed made an impact on our consciousness never to be forgotten.

Several tables set apart were marked for Aristokians only, but I noticed many citizens of the city-empire playing at the public tables.

I started playing the red, the color of love, passion, and danger. I lost steadily. Hyde played the black, which struck me as being a rather gloomy idea. He won. When I had only a hundred dollars left I shifted to black, and lost. I then and there decided that that particular table and I were not en rapport. I dragged Hyde, who was

nearly a thousand to the good, away with me to a table at the far end of the room.

And then I blessed my ill luck, for there was Gwendolyn at last! Her eyes sparkled and her face was flushed as she leaned toward the wheel and gaily bet some of Papa Wigleigh's money. Papa was with her. He was not betting.

As the evening progressed, I came to the conclusion that papa was the most supremely bored person I had ever seen in my life. Later I discovered that he had been born in a casual, offhand manner, and that boredom was to him as the color of their eyes is to most men, an unalterable feature.

Hyde noticed me staring at Gwendolyn and informed me that she was the reigning beauty of Aristokia.

"The man at her right," he added, "is Prince Juan do Braganza, the bestdressed man in Aristokia, for which he was made Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Navy, and Aërial Forces. He 's a gay Lothario, a home-breaker, the victorious participant in a hundred duels, the idol of the young bloods, and the adored of all the women. He has ninety-nine different uniforms and never wears the same one twice. He keeps thirty-three tailors busy."

I looked at the man on her right and recognized him immediately as the person who had caused such a commotion by his presence at the opera my first night in Aristokia. "What a peacock!" I thought. He was marvelous to look at. I had never seen a uniform fit so well. It was a part of him. He was the uniform.

And then as Gwendolyn glanced casually across at me without in any way acknowledging my existence, I suddenly felt shabby and ill at ease. I struggled helplessly with my collar, which I became convinced was at least two sizes too large for me.

I was trying desperately to make Gwendolyn look me in the eyes and give me some little sign when Hyde tugged my arm frantically.

"Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! Don't stare! The man on her left, her father, he 's the fellow who had me pinched to-day when I asked him the time. Let's go." And he pulled me away from the table.

But I had no intention of leaving that table; not until Gwendolyn did, at any rate. So I upbraided Hyde for his cowardice. Was he, a citizen of the world, going to let an aristocrat, a mere baron, frighten him away? Where was his pride? What would Benton, Nebraska, think of him? My words had the desired effect, and we returned to the table, but on the opposite side, near Gwendolyn.

I was determined to talk at Gwendolyn through Hyde. It was the only plan I could hit on.

"Do you ever walk in the Bois Bourbon near the statue of Marie Antoinette?" I said to Hyde as I placed a bet on the red. She was playing red.

Hyde was too busy betting to answer me, so I repeated the question loudly and with emphasis.

He murmured "No," as the croupier scooped in our money.

"I do," I almost shouted, "every morning at half-past nine."

"What's the idea?" asked Hyde.

"Oh, it's so nice and lonesome there. Nobody comes," I said, looking at Gwendolyn reproachfully.

"Good Lord! Then why do you do it?" queried the rather puzzled Hyde. "I go there to look for company."

"But you just said it was lonesome there," he protested.

"Yes, it is. That's the trouble." Hyde gave me a quick, searching glance. "What did you say?" he asked. “I don't think I understood."

He was evidently very much puzzled. I seized the opportunity with avidity and fairly yelled at him:

"Yes, that 's the trouble. Nobody 's there." I wanted Gwendolyn to get the significance of this remark.

Baron Wigleigh had been staring at me through his monocle for some time. I must confess it had made me a little nervous, but I was determined not to be put out of countenance by the aristocratic descendant of a chewing-gum magnate. After all, one could swallow my capsules.

So I looked right at the baron and added playfully, "Nobody, Nobody, NOBODY!"

The baron half squinted at me and turned to Don Juan.