“Ah!” cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, “of course. How foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will excuse me, will you not? Wanda will give you some tea.”
And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a person so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word jettison.
The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had found him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their knowledge of him. If he had only been that which is called a public man, a novelist or a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his advertising would have been done for him by others. For there was in him that unknown quantity which the world must needs think magnificent.
“I want you to tell me all you know about him,” said the princess in her brisk way. “He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the sort of person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love and marry, or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married already, and his wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy. But I don't. He has no wife—unless he has two.”
“I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career.”
“I do not care about his career,” said the princess, lightly. “I go deeper than careers.”
She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay, blue eyes.
“A man's career is only the surface of his life.”
“Then some men's lives are all surface,” said Cartoner.
Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.