she thought it far more likely that she would be eternally found.  But she was ashamed of herself, ashamed of all she had done, ashamed of the disgraceful way she had treated this man, terribly disillusioned, terribly out of conceit with herself, and she stood there changing colour, hanging her head, humbled, penitent, every shred of the dignity she had been trained to gone, simply somebody who has been very silly and is very sorry.

The Prince put out his hand.

She pretended not to see it.

The Prince came round the table.  “You know,” he said, “our engagement hasn’t been broken off yet?”

Her instinct was to edge away, but she would not stoop to edging.  “Was it ever made?” she asked, not able to induce her voice to rise above a whisper.

“Practically.”

There was another silence.

“Why, then—­” began Priscilla, for the silence had come to be more throbbing, more intolerably expressive than any speech.

“Yes?” encouraged the Prince, coming very close.

She turned her head slowly.  “Why, then—­” said Priscilla again, her face breaking into a smile, half touched, half mischievous, wholly adorable.

“I think so too,” said the Prince; and he shut her mouth with a kiss.

* * * * *

“And now,” said the Prince some time afterwards, “let us go to that old sinner Fritzing.”

Priscilla hung back, reluctant to deal this final blow to the heart that had endured so many.  “He’ll be terribly shocked,” she said.

But the Prince declared it had to be done; and hand in hand they went out into the street, and opening Fritzing’s door stood before him.

He was still absorbed in his AEschylus, had been sitting absorbed in the deeds of the dead and departed, of the long dead Xerxes, the long dead Darius, the very fish, voiceless but voracious, long since as dead as the most shredded of the sailors,—­he had been sitting absorbed in these various corpses all the while that in the next room, on the other side of a few inches of plaster and paper, so close you would have thought his heart must have burned within him, so close you would have thought he must be scorched, the living present had been pulsing and glowing, beating against the bright bars of the future, stirring up into alertness a whole row of little red-headed souls till then asleep, souls with golden eyelashes, souls eager to come and be princes and princesses of—­I had almost revealed the mighty nation’s name.  A shadow fell across his book, and looking up he saw the two standing before him hand in hand.

Priscilla caught her breath:  what white anguish was going to flash into his face when he grasped the situation?  Judge then of her amazement, her hesitation whether to be pleased or vexed, to laugh or cry, when, grasping it, he leaped to his feet and in tones of a most limitless, a most unutterable relief, shouted three times running “Gott sei Dank!”