The contrast between the tiny white room in the hospital with the dire shadow of the Grim Reaper hovering over the narrow cot bed, and the spacious, brilliant salon of the hotel, where life, assertive, aggressive, almost obtrusive, was dominant, had something of a dazzling effect on Carey Grey, and he paused a moment on the threshold, with blinking eyes, in an effort to adjust his vision to the sudden change of scene.

There was a momentary lull in the merriment that smote him as the door swung open in answer to his knock, and then the cannonade of voices—of cries of surprise, of welcoming greetings, of laughter—was resumed, and Nicholas Van Tuyl rose from his place at the round table, which, with its snowy damask dotted with pink-shaded candles and dappled with silver and crystal, seemed like the centre of some giant flower of which the308 men and women about it were the variegated petals.

“My friends,” cried the host, raising his voice and hand simultaneously for silence, “I have pleasure in presenting to you my future son-in-law, Mr. Carey Grey, of New York.”

The next instant everybody was shouting at once. The men were up and bearing down on the newcomer in a solid phalanx, and Lady Constance and Mrs. Dickie were waving their napkins and fairly shrieking their congratulations. When at length something like order reigned again, Frothingham found his champagne glass and proposed a toast:

“To the bride-elect,” he cried. “‘She moves a goddess and she looks a queen.’”

Grey’s response was brief but enthusiastic, and the significance of the quotation with which he closed it evoked an outburst of applause that must have been heard as far as the Kursaal, two blocks away.
“All yet seems well, and if it end so meet,
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.
The king’s a beggar now the play is done:
All is well ended, if this suit be won.”

309 He did not know it at the time, but prior to his coming the whole story of his adventure had been related and discussed, much to the entertainment of the party in general and to the intense edification and delight of young Edson in particular, who resolved to make to his chief, the Ambassador, a full report of the extraordinary affair, with a view to having it forwarded to Washington to be filed among the State archives, as indicative of a vulnerable point in Budavia’s boasted supremacy in statecraft. The aptness of the quotation, therefore, was more generally appreciated than Grey had any notion it would be, and the hilarious approbation of his auditors was consequently a good deal of a surprise.

Nicholas Van Tuyl, however, leaned over in the midst of the cheering, to tell him that the plot of his play and the part he had enacted were known to the company. The news was not ungrateful, for from the moment of his entrance he had felt a natural restraint, which was now relieved. Very soon the matter came up again, and he related his experience at the hospital, which was listened to with the deepest interest.

310 “Under the circumstances,” observed Sinclair Edson when Grey had finished, “it is not surprising that the extradition proceedings have been withdrawn.”

“Withdrawn?” exclaimed Grey, in amazement. “If it be true I should say it were most surprising.”

“We had a cable to that effect yesterday before I left Paris,” continued the secretary. “They were withdrawn at the instance of your partner, Mr. Mallory.”

“That is inexplicable,” Grey commented. “He doesn’t know anything more now than he did a week ago.”

Van Tuyl drained his wine-glass and wiped his lips with his napkin.

“Oh, yes he does, Carey,” he said, “he knows pretty much about it. I took the liberty of cabling to him all I knew. Besides, that whole business was a mare’s nest. If you hadn’t disappeared there would never have been any prosecution. Any one knows that a partner can’t be held for borrowing from his own firm, and unless I’m very much mistaken you were in a position to turn over311 real estate worth several times the amount secured on the bonds.”

“That is very true,” Grey replied, smiling, “but, strange as it may seem, that view of the situation never occurred to me before.”

“The newspapers were responsible for most of the hue and cry, I fancy,” Van Tuyl continued, “and as for the extradition part, I imagine Mallory took that step more from an impulse to find out whether the cable you sent him was really from you, and with the hope of locating you—dragging you back from the grave, so to speak—than with an idea of punishment for a crime that was never really committed.”

A Dresden clock on the mantel-shelf had tinkled midnight before the party broke up, agreeing to be down for an early breakfast at a quarter of eight, since the Van Tuyls and Grey were leaving Kürschdorf at nine, to connect with the Orient Express at Munich.

When the rest had gone, Grey, who had lingered, drew Hope out onto the balcony. The music of the band which had floated up from below throughout the evening had ceased, but the312 rushing Weisswasser and the breeze stirring the foliage of the trees on the Quai combined in a melody to which their hearts beat a joyous refrain. The stars twinkled in unison in the blue-black canopy of the heavens, and from the distance a nightingale’s song made chorus.

“‘She moves a goddess and she looks a queen,’” Grey repeated, his arm about the girl’s supple waist. “That was an inspiration on Frothingham’s part. The line was never more aptly quoted. My goddess! My queen! Ah, my darling, if I could only make you know the happiness that is mine tonight!”

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