“You mean about the prince?”

“I know all I want to know about him,” scornfully.  “I mean”—­her slender figure bent toward Mr. Heatherbloom—­“you!  What has taken place, and why has it?  What does it all mean?  Don’t you understand?”

He drew in his breath slowly.

“Tell me,” she said, still tensely poised, her eyes insistent in the shadow of her hair.

“Miss Dalrymple—­Betty—­” he half stammered.

“I want to know,” she repeated.  There was an inexorable demand in her gaze.  Mr. Heatherbloom straightened.  The ordeal?—­it must be met—­though that box of Pandora were best left unopened.  He could not refuse her anything; this she asked of him was not easy to grant, however.

“Where shall I begin?” he said uncertainly.  “You know a great deal.  There doesn’t seem much worth talking about.”

“Begin where we left off—­”

“Our boy-and-girl engagement?  You broke it.  Quite right of you!” She stirred slightly.  “It was, at best, but a perfunctory business, half arranged by our parents to keep the millions together—­”

“You never blamed me a little, then?” she asked.

“I—­blame you?” wonderingly.  “You were as far from me as a star.  What you thought of me, you told me; it was all right—­true stuff.  Though it sank in like a blade.  I was nothing—­worse than nothing.  A rich man’s son!—­a commonplace type.  A good fellow some called me at Monte Carlo, Paris, elsewhere.”  He paused.  A moment he seemed another personality—­that other one.  She saw it anew, caught a glimpse of it like a flash on a mirror; then he seemed to relapse farther back into the shadow.  “I really don’t want to bore you,” he said perfunctorily, raising an uncertain hand to the stray; lock on his forehead.

“You aren’t—­doing that.  Go on.”  Her eyes were full of questions.  “After I saw you that last time”—­he nodded—­“you disappeared.  No one ever heard anything of you; again, or knew what had become of you.”

“As no one cared,” he said with a short laugh, “what did it matter?”

“You were lost to the world—­had vanished completely,” she went on.  “Sometimes I thought—­feared you were dead.”  Her voice changed.

“Feared?” he repeated.  “Ah, yes!  You did not want me to go out like that.”

“No,” she said slowly.  “Not like that.”

He looked at her comprehendingly; in spite of the bitter passionate repudiation of him, she had been a little in earnest—­had cared, in the least, how he went down.

“Why,” he said, with a forced smile, “I didn’t think you’d bother to give the matter a thought.”

“You had some purpose?” she persisted, studying him.  “I see—­seem to feel it now.  It all—­you—­were incomprehensible.  I mean, when I saw you again that first time, in New York, after so long—­”

“It was funny, wasn’t it?” he said with rather strained lightness.  “The Chariot of Concord—­What’s the Matter with Mother?—­the gaping or jibing crowd—­then you, going by—­”