hts spent striding, a sudden calm fell
upon him. At length he could feel what he had always seen, that there
could not be two duties for a man, that no man can serve two masters,
that a man's one clear duty is to be in the possession of his soul and
live the life it approves: in other and shorter words, instead of
leading Priscilla, Priscilla was now leading him.

She did more than lead him; she drove him. The soul he had so
carefully tended and helped to grow was now grown stronger than his
own; for there was added to its natural strength the tremendous daring
of absolute inexperience. What can be more inexperienced than a
carefully guarded young princess? Priscilla's ignorance of the outside
world was pathetic. He groaned over her plans--for it was she who
planned and he who listened--and yet he loved them. She was a divine
woman, he said to himself; the sweetest and noblest, he was certain,
that the world would ever see.

Her plans were these:

First, that having had twenty-one years of life at the top of the
social ladder she was now going to get down and spend the next
twenty-one at the bottom of it. (Here she gave her reasons, and I will
not stop to describe Fritzing's writhings as his own past teachings
grinned at him through every word she said.)

Secondly, that the only way to get to the bottom being to run away
from Kunitz, she was going to run.

Thirdly, that the best and nicest place for living at the bottom would
be England. (Here she explained her conviction that beautiful things
grow quite naturally round the bottom of ladders that cannot easily
reach the top; flowers of self-sacrifice and love, of temperance,
charity, godliness--delicate things, with roots that find their
nourishment in common soil. You could not, said Priscilla, expect soil
at the top of ladders, could you? And as she felt that she too had
roots full of potentialities, she must take them down to where their
natural sustenance lay waiting.)

Fourthly, they were to live somewhere in the country in England, in
the humblest way.

Fifthly, she was to be his daughter.

"Daughter?" cried Fritzing, bounding in his chair. "Your Grand Ducal
Highness forgets I have friends in England, every one of whom is aware
that I never had a wife."

"Niece, then," said Priscilla.

He gazed at her in silence, trying to imagine her his niece. He had
two sisters, and they had stopped exactly at the point they were at
when they helped him, barefoot,