red and
worm-eaten rose?"

"A whim," I said, staring at the rug. I wondered how she came to
surmise that it was Gretchen's rose? Intuition, perhaps.

"Do you love her well enough," asked Phyllis, plucking the lace on her
fan, "to sacrifice all the world for her, to give up all your own
happiness that she might become happy?"

"She never can be happy without me--if she loves me as I believe." I
admit that this was a selfish thought to express.

"Then, why is it impossible--your love and hers? If her love for you
is as great as you say it is, what is a King, a Prince, or a
principality to her?"

"It is none of those. It is because she has given her word, the word
of a Princess. What would you do in her place?" suddenly.

"I?" Phyllis leaned back among the cushions her eyes half-closed and a
smile on her lips. "I am afraid that if I loved you I should follow
you to the end of the world. Honor is a fine thing, but in her case it
is an empty word. If she broke this word for you, who would be
wronged? No one, since the Prince covets only her dowry and the King
desires only his will obeyed. Perhaps I do not understand what social
obligation means to these people who are born in purple."

"Perhaps that is it. Phyllis, listen, and I will tell you a romance
which has not yet been drawn to its end. Once upon a time--let me call
it a fairy story," said I, drawing down a palm leaf as if to read the
tale from its blades. "Once upon a time, in a country far from ours,
there lived a Prince and a Princess. The Prince was rather a bad
fellow. His faith in his wife was not the best. And he made a vow
that if ever children came he would make them as evil as himself. Not
long after the good fairy brought two children to her godchild, the
Princess. Remembering the vow made by the Prince, the good fairy
carried away one of the children, and no one knew anything about it
save the Princess and the fairy. When the remaining child was two
years old the Princess died. The child from then on grew like a wild
flower. The Prince did his best to spoil her, but the good fairy
watched over her, just as carefully as she watched over the child she
had hidden away. By and by the wicked Prince died. The child reached
womanhood. The good fairy went away and left her; perhaps she now gave
her whole attention to the other." I let the palm leaf slip back, and
drew down a fresh one, Phyllis watching me with interest. "The chil