ow, he had irreverently likened to a crocodile--"either to
marry a pauper or to be contented with a left-handed alliance. And I
love her. And so"--he shrugged--"there is positively nothing left to
do save sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of
kings."

She said, "Oh, and you mean it! You are speaking the plain truth!" A
change had come into her lovely face which would have made him think it
even lovelier had not that contingency been beyond conception.

And Mildred Claridge said, "It is not fair for dreamers such as you to
let a woman know just how he loves her. That is not wooing. It is
bullying."

His lips were making a variety of irrational noises. And he was near
to her. Also he realized that he had never known how close akin were
fear and joy, so close the two could mingle thus, and be quite
undistinguishable. And then repentance smote him.

"I am contemptible!" he groaned. "I had no right to trouble you with
my insanities. Indeed I had not ever meant to let you guess how mad I
was. But always I have evaded my responsibilities. So I remain Prince
Fribble to the last."

"Oh, but I knew, I have always known." She held her eyes away from
him. "And I wrote to Lord Brudenel only yesterday releasing him from
his engagement."

And now without uncertainty or haste Paul Vanderhoffen touched her
cheek and raised her face, so that he saw it plainly in the rising
twilight, and all its wealth of tenderness newborn. And what he saw
there frightened him.

For the girl loved him! He felt himself to be, as most men do, a
swindler when he comprehended this preposterous fact; and, in addition,
he thought of divers happenings, such as shipwrecks, holocausts and
earthquakes, which might conceivably have appalled him, and understood
that he would never in his life face any sense of terror as huge as was
this present sweet and illimitable awe.

And then he said, "You know that what I hunger for is impossible.
There are so many little things, like common-sense, to be considered.
For this is just a matter which concerns you and Paul Vanderhoffen--a
literary hack, a stuttering squeak-voiced ne'er-do-well, with an
acquired knack for scribbling verses that are feeble-minded enough for
Annuals and Keepsake Books, and so fetch him an occasional guinea.
For, my dear, the verses I write of my own accord are not sufficiently
genteel to be vended in Paternoster Row; they smack too dangerously of
human