“Now, Sir Max, open your mouth.”

“I have already swallowed one,” said Max, laughing, “and I will swallow none other so long as I live.”

As Max lowered her to the floor her arm fell about his neck for an instant, and the great strong boy trembled at the touch of this weak girl.

Out to the garden we went again after supper, and when dusk began to fall, Yolanda led Max to a rustic seat in the deep shadow of the vines.  I could not hear their words, but I learned afterward of the conversation.

When I thought Yolanda was the princess, I was joyful because of the marked favor that she showed Max.  When I thought she was a burgher girl, I felt like a fussy old hen with a flock of ducks if he were alone with her.  She seemed then a bewitching little ogress slowly devouring my handsome Prince Max.  That she was fair, entrancing, and lovable beyond any woman I had ever known, only added to my anxiety.  Would Max be strong enough to hold out against her wooing?  I don’t like to apply the word “wooing” to a young girl’s conduct, but we all know that woman does her part in the great system of human mating when the persons most interested do the choosing; and it is right that she should.  The modesty that prevents a woman from showing her preference is the result of a false philosophy, and flies in the face of nature.  Her right to choose is as good as man’s.

If Yolanda’s wooing was more pronounced than is usual with a modest young girl, it must be remembered that her situation was different.  She knew that Max had been restrained from wooing her only because of the impassable gulf that lay between them.  Ardor in Max when marriage was impossible would have been an insult to Yolanda.  His reticence for conscience’ sake and for her sake was the most chivalric flattery he could have paid her.  She saw the situation clearly, and, trusting Max implicitly, felt safe in giving rein to her heart.  She did not care to hide from him its true condition.  On the contrary she wished him to be as sure of her as she was of him, for after all that would be the only satisfaction they would ever know.

I argued:  If Yolanda were the princess, betrothed to the Dauphin, the gulf between her and Max was as impassable as if she were a burgher girl.  In neither case could she hope to marry him.  Therefore, her girlish wooing was but the outcry of nature and was without boldness.

The paramount instinct of all nature is to flower.  Even the frozen Alpine rock sends forth its edelweiss, and the heart of a princess is first the heart of a woman, and must blossom when its spring comes.  All the conventions that man can invent will not keep back the flower.  All created things, animate and inanimate, have in them an uncontrollable impulse which, in their spring, reverts with a holy retrospect to the great first principle of existence, the love of reproduction.