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"Mademoiselle Cleo?"

"The young lady who is so called," Itash assented. "She has been my companion for some time here in Monte Carlo. I will now be very truthful. I have taken a fancy to another girl. Such things happen."

"Quite so," Grant agreed. "But I can't exactly see how this concerns me."

"It is in this way. Cleo is very, very angry. She knows that I am in the Diplomatic Service,—that I am, in fact, occupying a very confidential and important position down here. She makes a pretence of having obtained possession of secret information concerning the affairs over which I watch, and she threatens to make use of it."

"Well?"

"But I have never confided in her, not one word," the young man declared. "We Japanese are not like that. We do not talk. We carry our secrets in our brain."

"Then if you have told her nothing, what are you afraid of?" Grant asked.

"I have told her nothing," Itash repeated vehemently, "nor can I think of a single written line of a compromising nature which could possibly have come into her possession. Yet I am disturbed in my mind. Cleo is a strange being. She has the gift of speaking the truth. Not all people have it. When she speaks a thing, one's heart feels that it is true. So when she tells me that there are secrets of mine which have come within her knowledge, I am afraid. She came to you last night, and she talked to you earnestly. I ask you, sir, did she tell you anything of those affairs confided to me, the disclosure of which could amount in any way to a breach of faith?"