ttles down to anything you or the Courts of Europe can
provide. After that--if you let her plunge deep enough--you won't have
any trouble; she will marry anything you offer. Of course, if you really
believed in monarchy as a principle, and not as a mere expedient--a
divine institution, and not as the last ditch in which the old
class-barriers have to be maintained--you would let her marry any one
she chose. It would do the monarchy no harm, and might do it good."

The King shook his head. "It's no use talking like that," said he. "We
are not free, any of us. The more other ranks of society have become
mixed, commercially mixed--for you know it is money that has done
it--the more we must maintain ours. Royalty must not barter itself
away."

"But you _do_ barter it," said Max, "for rank if not for gold. And the
one is really as base as the other. The great game for royalty to play
now-a-days is courageous domesticity."

"There are limits," replied his father. "We must maintain our position."

"That is just where you make the mistake," retorted Max. "You and my
dear mother are always ready to play the domestic game where it is not
important. You allow photographs of your private life to be on sale in
shop-windows; charming private details slip out in newspaper paragraphs;
one of you behaves with natural and decent civility to some ordinary
poor person, and news of it is immediately flashed to all the press. Two
years ago, for instance, when you were triumphantly touring the United
States you arrived by some accident at a place called New York; and
there, early one morning, having evaded the reporters, you stood looking
up at the sky-scrapers when you trod on an errand-boy's toe, or knocked
his basket out of his hand; and having done so you touched your hat and
apologized--you a King to an errand-boy! And immediately all America,
which yawps of equality and of one man being the equal of any other,
fell rapturously in love with you! You, I daresay, have forgotten the
incident?"

"Quite," said the King.

"But America remembers it. When you left, with all the locusts of the
press clinging to the wheels of your chariot, they dubbed you 'conqueror
of hearts'; and it was mainly because you had knocked over an errand-boy
and apologized to him. Now you do these things naturally; but they are
all really part of the business: your secretaries report them to the
press."

"What?" exclaimed the King, startled.

"Why, of course