seated, and then offered us pipes, which we declined.

“Here is our DIPLOMAT, then — the hero of the day!” he said to me, “Good Lord! how you look like a colonel!”

“H-m!” I muttered in reply, though once more feeling a complacent smile overspread my countenance.

I stood in that awe of Dubkoff which a sixteen-year-old boy naturally feels for a twenty-seven-year-old man of whom his elders say that he is a very clever young man who can dance well and speak French, and who, though secretly despising one’s youth, endeavours to conceal the fact.

Yet, despite my respect for him, I somehow found it difficult and uncomfortable, throughout my acquaintanceship with him, to look him