"We have actually been talking nonsense," she said, "and Ithought that you, Prince, were far too serious.""We were talking fairy tales," he answered, "and they are not nonsense. Do not you ever read the history of your country as it was many hundreds of years ago, before this ugly thing they call civilization weakened the sinews of our race and besmirched the very face of duty? Do you not like to read of the times when life was simpler and more natural, and there was space for every man to live and grow and stretch out his hands to the skies,--every man and every woman? They call them, in your literature, the days of romance. They existed, too, in my country. It is not nonsense to imagine for a little time that the ages between have rolled away and that those days are with us?""No," she answered, "it is not nonsense. But if they were?"He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. The touch of his hand, the absolute delicacy of the salute itself, made it unlike any other caress she had ever known or imagined.
"The world might have been happier for both of us," he whispered.
Somerfield, sullen and discontented, came and looked at them, moved away, and then hesitatingly returned.
"Willmott is waiting for you," he said. "The last was my dance, and this is his."She rose at once and turned to the Prince.
"I think that we should go back," she said. "Will you take me to my aunt?""If it must be so," he answered. "Tell me, Miss Penelope," he added, "may I ask your aunt or the Duchess to bring you one day to my house to see my treasures? I cannot say how long I shall remain in this country. I would like you so much to come before Ibreak up my little home."
"Of course we will," she answered. "My aunt goes nowhere, but the Duchess will bring me, I am sure. Ask her when I am there, and we can agree about the day."He leaned a little towards her.
"Tomorrow?" he whispered.
She nodded. There were three engagements for the next day of which she took no heed.
"Tomorrow," she said. "Come and let us arrange it with the Duchess."Prince Maiyo left Devenham House to find the stars paling in the sky, and the light of an April dawn breaking through the black clouds eastwards. He dismissed his electric brougham with a little wave of the hand, and turned to walk to his house in St.
James's Square. As he walked, he bared his head. After the long hours of artificially heated rooms, there was something particularly soothing about the fresh sweetness of the early spring morning. There was something, it seemed to him, which reminded him, however faintly, of the mornings in his own land,--the perfume of the flowers from the window-boxes, perhaps, the absence of that hideous roar of traffic, or the faint aromatic scent from the lime trees in the Park, heavy from recent rain. It was the quietest hour of the twenty-four,--the hour almost of dawn. The night wayfarers had passed away, the great army of toilers as yet slumbered. One sad-eyed woman stumbled against him as he walked slowly up Piccadilly. He lifted his hat with an involuntary gesture, and her laugh changed into a sob. He turned round, and emptied his pockets of silver into her hand, hurrying away quickly that his eyes might not dwell upon her face.
"A coward always," he murmured to himself, a little wearily, for he knew where his weakness lay,--an invincible repugnance to the ugly things of life. As he passed on, however, his spirits rose again. He caught a breath of lilac scent from a closed florist's shop. He looked up to the skies, over the housetops, faintly blue, growing clearer every moment. Almost he fancied that he looked again into the eyes of this strange girl, recalled her unexpected yet delightful frankness, which to him, with his love of abstract truth, was, after all, so fascinating. Oh, there was much to be said for this Western world!--much to be said for those whose part it was to live in it! Yet, never so much as during that brief night walk through the silent streets, did he realize how absolutely unfitted he was to be even a temporary sojourner in this vast city. What would they say of him if they knew,--of him, a breaker of their laws, a guest, and yet a sinner against all their conventions; a guest, and yet one whose hand it was which would strike them, some day or other, the great blow!
What would she think of him? He wondered whether she would realize the truth, whether she would understand. Almost as he asked himself the question, he smiled. To him it seemed a strange proof of the danger in which a weaker man would stand of passing under the yoke of this hateful Western civilization. To dream of her--yes! To see her face shining upon him from every beautiful place, to feel the delight of her presence with every delicious sensation,--the warmth of the sunlight, the perfume of the blossoms he loved! There was joy in this, the joy of the artist and the lover. But to find her in his life, a real person, a daughter of this new world, whose every instinct would be at war with his--that way lay slavery! He brushed the very thought from him.
As he reached the door of his house in St. James' Square, it opened slowly before him. He had brought his own servants from his own country, and in their master's absence sleep was not for them. His butler spoke to him in his own language. The Prince nodded and passed on. On his study table--a curious note of modernism where everything seemed to belong to a bygone world--was a cablegram. He tore it open. It consisted of one word only. He let the thin paper fall fluttering from his fingers. So the time was fixed!
Then Soto came gliding noiselessly into the room, fully dressed, with tireless eyes but wan face,--Soto, the prototype of his master, the most perfect secretary and servant evolved through all the years.
"Master," he said, "there has been trouble here. An Englishman came with this card."The Prince took it, and read the name of Inspector Jacks.
"Well?" he murmured.
"The man asked questions," Soto continued. "We spoke English so badly that he was puzzled. He went away, but he will come again."The Prince smiled, and laid his hand almost caressingly upon the other's shoulder.
"It is of no consequence, Soto," he said,--"no consequence whatever."
