of God and man you've got to go back and take up the Cross
where you left it seventeen years ago,--that you're booked to marry a
Prince, I think. And he's armed with an iron-bound authority to take
you. He says you've no possible escape--though, of course, you won't
want any. I have to tell you this," I continued more hastily, for it was
an extremely difficult thing to say, "because I'm only an ordinary kind
of American chap, as bad as the worst and as good as the best, but your
court in Azuria would have forty duck fits if it knew we were playing
together in the woods without a chaperone. Suppose you make me your
Chancellor, or something like that--chancellor of your Oasian
possessions! Then I can report for orders and escort you about with all
propriety, and we can talk and laugh occasionally without having some
big soldier stick me in the back with his halberd."

She had been listening attentively, gravely, to everything I said until
this last, when she burst into a scream of laughter, rocking herself to
and fro in a transport of merriment.

"You're the funniest thing I ever saw!--but so be it, Mr. Jack
Brown-Bangs, et cetera, et cetera! I make you my Royal Chancellor,
responsible for the welfare of our Oasis!"

"And for the protection of Your Serenity," I bowed, really feeling as if
I'd been knighted.

"Thank you," she said gravely. "I couldn't ask for a braver protector.
But, Chancellor," she looked at me with serious eyes, "why did you say I
must take up my Cross? It sounded like such a direful prophecy."

My lips refused to speak. As a matter of fact, I had been thinking more
about my own Cross; how I should have to carry it after she went away
until my heart broke beneath its cruel weight.

"That was a careless way of meaning something else," I tried to answer
lightly.

"You shouldn't say evasive things. It leads to speaking with two
tongues, which Echochee has taught me is wrong."

"Well, it couldn't be a direful prophecy, anyhow, when your mother and
your throne are waiting just around the corner, as it were. The direful
part of your life has passed, and most appropriately your name has
changed from Doloria to Princess--though, of the two, I prefer Doloria."

"When it means sorrow?"

"It only means sorrow to those you leave. You've paid dearly enough to
find nothing but happiness now for the rest of your life. It's written
in the sky."

"You're a comforting Chancellor," she was still looking at m