Then he says to me: 'Konrad, you married her. Good. You
are in a fortress for life.' And I am. You do not understand the
Emperor, my friend."

"I'm beginning to," said Gorman.

It was Smith who talked over Konrad Karl in the end. I am sure that
Donovan would not have approved of his argument. I doubt whether
Gorman would have cared to use it. Smith said frankly that a marriage
performed by Stephanos the Elder would be no marriage at all outside
the Island of Salissa and could be repudiated at any time without the
slightest inconvenience.

"You think," said the King, "that I wish to desert Corinne. But
never."

"Beg pardon, your Majesty," said Smith. "That wasn't the idea in my
mind. What I was thinking of, your Majesty, was the way the matter
might be represented to the Emperor."

The King saw the point. On the whole he seems to have been pleased
when his last difficulty was removed and he was actually able to marry
his beloved Corinne.

I do not think they were very happy afterwards. They were, no doubt,
well enough suited to each other. But neither of them was suited to a
life on Salissa. Monotony preyed on them. They both suffered from a
kind of homesickness, an aching hunger for streets, theatres, shops,
the rattle of traffic, the glitter of city life at night. They would
have been good friends if they had been able to live their proper
lives. Even on Salissa King Konrad Karl remained a lover. But they
bickered a great deal and sometimes openly quarrelled. Then Madame
would retire to her room and sulk for hours or whole days, while the
King wandered about the palace and bewailed the cruelty of Corinne.

Gorman too, in his own way, suffered from homesickness and had fits of
irritation. He had lived his life in the centre of events, not great
events, but such things as intrigues at Westminster, changes of
Governments, and amendments, in committees, of Acts of Parliament. He
had always known what was going on in the world. He found himself
hopelessly shut off from all news of the greatest happenings of his
time. He wanted desperately to know what England was doing, whether
the French had risen to the occasion. He wanted, above all, to know
about Ireland. Was Ireland in the throes of a civil war, or were her
children taking their places in the ranks of the Allied Armies? Gorman
was unreasonably annoyed by King Konrad Karl's certainty that the
Emperor would win the war and by Donovan's passive neutrality of
se