"Oh, I know the meaning of the word," she assured him. "So I repeat: is it the custom of the men of this country to be polygamous?"
"There is no woman in this house, besides yourself, madam, except servant women," he managed to enunciate. "That voice you heard is not the voice of a woman in this house, but the voice of a woman miles away who is your servant, or is anybody's servant who desires to talk over the telephone."
"She is the slave of the mystery?" the Queen questioned, beginning to get a dim glimmer of the actuality of the matter.
"Yes," her husband's valet admitted. "She is a slave of the telephone."
"Of the flying speech?"
"Yes, madam, call it that, of the flying speech." He was desperate to escape from a situation unprecedented in his entire career. "Come, I will show you,
