k."

"I can hardly do that," said the King, "under the circumstances--if, as
you say, there is disturbance going on."

"It is disturbance of a very unanimous kind," said the Prince; "the
public is enjoying itself thoroughly. Did I not the other day advise you
to reach out a fearless hand to democracy? Well, you have done so; and
the dear, good beast has given you its paw."

"I don't think I can go."

"Then you will never understand. But, indeed, sir, I think that you
should. I have taken a box under a private name and we can go
unobserved; the play has already begun; and if you will keep to the back
no one will know that you are there. Besides it is Lent, a season when
the incognito of your visits becomes a recognized rule. Do you think you
are justified in missing so vivid an interpretation of the popular
will?"

The King's hesitation ended. "I suppose I must go on doing the
unexpected," said he, "now that I have once begun."

"You could not make a better rule," said Max.

And so, quite unexpectedly, and to the extreme bewilderment of a
detective force taken suddenly by surprise, the King found himself in
the theater where performance number three of _The Gaudy Girl_ was going
on.

The house was packed, tumultuous, and excited. As he entered the
sheltering gloom of the box his Majesty recognized the words of the
play, remembered, too, that a censored passage lay close ahead. It came.

A sumptuously bosomed figure stepped into the limelight and sang. In the
second verse she threw out a rhyme that seemed to clamor for its
pair--threw it out as the angler throws out his fly for the fish that is
sure to rise. The King held his breath as the blue-penciled passage drew
near. The voice quavered and broke; singer and orchestra stopped dead.
The house roared. "Go on!" cried encouraging voices from gallery and
pit. "Go on! Go on!" And the singer thus emboldened, and accompanied by
one small piping flute, a ridiculous starveling of sound after all the
blare that had preceded it, sang with a modest and deprecating air a
line which fell very flat indeed--a mere nothing tagged from a nursery
rhyme--obviously an importation. Stalls, pit, and gallery rocked and
shouted with laughter. "Try again!" roared the crowd; and with small,
frightened mimminy-pimminy tones the singer tried again. This time a
snippet from the national anthem served her turn--but it was no good,
the audience would have none of it; in a crescendo of upro