"The principle on which it offers you a living ?" "Oh, come," said Billy, "that's rather rough! You know very well what I mean.

'Tisn't always in the serious reports you get the color of a fact, just as the gossip of a dinner-table is often more enlightening than a cabinet council." "Apropos ?" "I was thinking of this Petersburg affair." "What?
The everlasting Duma business ?" McCutcheon drew in a long breath of smoke.
Billy looked superior, as befitted a man who dealt in subtler matters than mere politics.

"Not at all," he said.

"The disappearance of the Princess Davorska." Here Blake made a murmur of impatience.

"Oh, Billy, don't!" he said.
"It's so frightfully banal." McCutcheon took his cigar from his mouth.