sorrows. I dare to tell you that, knowing you. He needs not a mere
wife, but a mate, a helpmate, to strive with him, her hand in his. Every
man needs the helpmate, as I read the world. For it cannot but be that a
man falls below himself when he comes home always to an empty room."

The Princess was silent. Wogan hoped that he had reassured her. But her
thoughts were now turned from herself. She leaned yet further forward
with her elbows upon her knees, and in a yet lower voice she asked a
question which fairly startled him.

"Does she not love you?"

Wogan, indeed, had spoken unconsciously, with a deep note of sadness in
his voice, which had sounded all the more strange and sad to her from
its contrast with the quick, cheerful, vigorous tones she had come to
think the mark of him. He had spoken as though he looked forward with a
poignant regret through a weary span of days, and saw himself always in
youth and middle years and age coming home always to an empty room.
Therefore she put her question, and Wogan was taken off his guard.

"There is no one," he said in a flurry.

Clementina shook her head.

"I wish that I may hear the King speak so, and in that voice; I shall be
very sure he loves me," she said in a musing voice, and so changing
almost to a note of raillery. "Tell me her name!" she pleaded. "What is
amiss with her that she is not thankful for a true man's love like
yours? Is she haughty? I'll bring her on her knees to you. Does she
think her birth sets her too high in the world? I'll show her so much
contempt, you so much courtesy, that she shall fall from her arrogance
and dote upon your steps. Perhaps she is too sure of your devotion? Why,
then, I'll make her jealous!"

Wogan interrupted her, and the agitation of his voice put an end to her
raillery. Somehow she had wounded him who had done so much for her.

"Madam, I beg you to believe me, there is no one;" and casting about for
a sure argument to dispel her conjectures, he said on an impulse,
"Listen; I will make your Highness a confidence." He stopped, to make
sure that Gaydon and Mrs. Misset were still asleep. Then he laughed
uneasily like a man that is half-ashamed and resumed,--"I am lord and
king of a city of dreams. Here's the opening of a fairy tale, you will
say. But when I am asleep my city's very real; and even now that I am
awake I could draw you a map of it, though I could not name its streets.
That's my town's one blemish. Its streets