progress to teach rogues who aren't worth a snap to prate
of their worth. Well, it is pretty enough in you to think as you think.
What says the King to it?" He turned to me with a courteous smile, but
with an unceremoniously intent gaze in his eyes.

I had no answer ready; I was still excited.

"I have tried to interest the King in these lines of thought," said
Owen.

"Ah, yes, very proper," assented Hammerfeldt, his eyes still set on my
face. "We must have more talk about the matter. Princess Heinrich awaits
me now."

Owen and I were left together. He was smiling, but rather sadly; yet he
laughed outright when I, carried beyond boyish shame by my indignation,
broke into a tirade and threw back at him something of what he had
taught me. Suddenly he interrupted me.

"Let's go for a row on the river and have one pleasant afternoon," he
said, laying his hand on my shoulder. "The Prince does not want us any
more to-day."

The afternoon dwells in my memory. In my belief Owen's quick mind had
read something of the Prince's purpose; for he was more demonstrative of
affection than was his wont. He seemed to eye me with a pitiful love
that puzzled me; and he began to talk (this also was rare with him) of
my special position, how I must be apart from other men, and to
speculate in seeming idleness on what a place such as mine would be to
him and make of him. All this came between our spurts of rowing or among
our talk of sport or of flowers as we lay at rest under the bank.

"If there were two kings here, as there were in Sparta!" I cried
longingly.

"There were ephors, too," he reminded me, and we laughed. Hammerfeldt
was our ephor.

There was a banquet that night. I sat at the head of the table, with my
mother opposite and Hammerfeldt at her right hand. The Prince gave my
health after dinner, and passed on to a warm and eloquent eulogy on
those who had trained me. In the course of it he dwelt pointedly on the
obligation under which Geoffrey Owen had laid me, and of the debt all
the nation owed to one who had inspired its king with a liberal culture
and a zeal for humanity. I could have clapped my hands in delight. I
looked at Owen, who sat far down the table. His gaze was on Hammerfeldt,
and his lips were parted in a smile. I did not understand his smile, but
it persisted all through the Prince's graceful testimony to his
services. It was not like him to smile with that touch of satire when he
was praised. But I sa