must
know--so many things we must not do. I have often gazed from the windows
of the palace and envied the boys in the gutter!"

"Not really!"

"Oh, not really, of course. I would not change. What I envied them was
their liberty, their freedom to come and go as it pleased them."

"But since you are of age?"

"Even yet, each moment must be accounted for. I am now a lieutenant in
the navy, and am supposed to employ each hour profitably. My father is a
very great man; there are few things that he does not know; and he
expects his sons to know as much. Even of pictures, which bore me; even
of music, which distresses me. Everything is arranged. At such a time,
I am to be with my ship; again, I am to attend the opera; again, I am to
be present at the opening of a museum; again, I must listen to a long
address which I do not understand. I may not even choose my own wife.
All that is arranged."

"But no doubt," Kasia suggested, amused at his forlorn aspect, "your
father will choose more wisely than you would."

"I do not know," said the Prince disconsolately. "I fear that he will
consider birth and position of more importance than youth and beauty.
Besides, there are some things a man likes to do for himself. My poor
sister, now...."

He stopped, for, under the stimulus of Miss Vard's sympathy, he found
himself about to betray a family secret.

"Yes, I can understand that," said Kasia, with more tenderness than she
had yet shown. "You don't mind my talking frankly to you?"

"I love to be talked frankly to," protested the Prince.

This was very far from the truth, only the Prince didn't know it. What
he really loved was flattery disguised as frankness. In this, he
resembled most other human beings.

"Well, then," said Kasia, "if you don't like it, if you find it
intolerable, why don't you cut and run?"

"Cut and run?"

"Yes; go away by yourself, be a free man, and marry the woman you love.
For of course there is such a woman?"

"Oh, yes," and the Prince thought of the blue-eyed daughter of the
shopkeeper in the Friedrichstrasse, just off Unter den Linden; however,
he had never thought of marriage in connection with her. "But suppose I
should do that," he added, "how should I live?"

"How do other men live? By work!"

"But that would be a disgrace!"

"Disgrace! It isn't half so disgraceful as to live by the work of other
men."

"Your father said something of the same sort to me. But I fear that
neither o