At this point she had not realized it.  She still was awestruck by her promotion, and looked so small and black and uncertain among her new surroundings on the turbine that if not clever of him it was at least natural that he should address her in a manner familiar to those who have had to do with men when they are being tried.  He behaved, that is, to Annalise, as he had behaved to his ideals in the night; he shook his fist at her, and called her fool.  It was because she had broken the Princess’s umbrella.  This was the new umbrella bought by him with so much trouble in Gerstein two days before, and therefore presumably of a sufficient toughness to stand any reasonable treatment for a time.  There was a mist and a drizzle at Calais, and Priscilla, refusing to go under shelter, had sent Fritzing to fetch her umbrella, and when he demanded it of Annalise, she offered it him in two pieces.  This alone was enough to upset a wise man, because wise men are easily upset; but Annalise declared besides that the umbrella had broken itself.  It probably had.  What may not one expect of anything so cheap?  Fritzing, however, was maddened by this explanation, and wasted quite a long time pointing out to her in passionate language that it was an inanimate object, and that inanimate objects have no initiative and never therefore break themselves.  To which Annalise, with a stoutness ominous as a revelation of character, replied by repeating her declaration that the umbrella had certainly broken itself.  Then it was that he shook his fist at her and called her fool.  So greatly was he moved that, after walking away and thinking it over, he went to her a second time and shook his fist at her and called her knave.

I will not linger over this of the umbrella; it teems with lessons.

While it was going on the Princess was being very happy.  She was sitting unnoticed in a deck-chair and feeling she was really off at last into the Ideal.  Some of us know the fascination of that feeling, and all of us know the fascination of new things; and to be unnoticed was for her of a most thrilling newness.  Nobody looked at her.  People walked up and down the deck in front of her as though she were not there.  One hurried passenger actually tripped over her feet, and passed on with the briefest apology.  Everywhere she saw indifferent faces, indifferent, oblivious faces.  It was simply glorious.  And she had had no trials since leaving Gerstein.  There Fritzing had removed her beyond the range of the mother’s eyes, grown at last extremely cold and piercing; Annalise, all meek anxiety to please, had put her to bed in the sleeping-car of the Brussels express; and in the morning her joy had been childish at having a little tray with bad coffee on it thrust in by a busy attendant, who slammed it down on the table and hurried out without so much as glancing at her.  How delicious that was.  The Princess laughed with delight and drank the coffee, grits and all.  Oh, the blessed freedom