She leaned forward to him and said in a low voice,—­

“Tell me of the King.  I shall make mistakes in this new world.  Will he have patience with me while I learn?”

She had spoken upon the same strain in the darkness of the staircase only the night before.  Wogan gently laughed her fears aside.

“I will tell you the truest thing about the King.  He needs you at his side.  For all his friends, he is at heart a lonely man, throned upon sorrows.  I dare to tell you that, knowing you.  He needs not a mere wife, but a mate, a helpmate, to strive with him, her hand in his.  Every man needs the helpmate, as I read the world.  For it cannot but be that a man falls below himself when he comes home always to an empty room.”

The Princess was silent.  Wogan hoped that he had reassured her.  But her thoughts were now turned from herself.  She leaned yet further forward with her elbows upon her knees, and in a yet lower voice she asked a question which fairly startled him.

“Does she not love you?”

Wogan, indeed, had spoken unconsciously, with a deep note of sadness in his voice, which had sounded all the more strange and sad to her from its contrast with the quick, cheerful, vigorous tones she had come to think the mark of him.  He had spoken as though he looked forward with a poignant regret through a weary span of days, and saw himself always in youth and middle years and age coming home always to an empty room.  Therefore she put her question, and Wogan was taken off his guard.

“There is no one,” he said in a flurry.

Clementina shook her head.

“I wish that I may hear the King speak so, and in that voice; I shall be very sure he loves me,” she said in a musing voice, and so changing almost to a note of raillery.  “Tell me her name!” she pleaded.  “What is amiss with her that she is not thankful for a true man’s love like yours?  Is she haughty?  I’ll bring her on her knees to you.  Does she think her birth sets her too high in the world?  I’ll show her so much contempt, you so much courtesy, that she shall fall from her arrogance and dote upon your steps.  Perhaps she is too sure of your devotion?  Why, then, I’ll make her jealous!”

Wogan interrupted her, and the agitation of his voice put an end to her raillery.  Somehow she had wounded him who had done so much for her.

“Madam, I beg you to believe me, there is no one;” and casting about for a sure argument to dispel her conjectures, he said on an impulse, “Listen; I will make your Highness a confidence.”  He stopped, to make sure that Gaydon and Mrs. Misset were still asleep.  Then he laughed uneasily like a man that is half-ashamed and resumed,—­“I am lord and king of a city of dreams.  Here’s the opening of a fairy tale, you will say.  But when I am asleep my city’s very real; and even now that I am awake I could draw you a map of it, though I could not name its streets.  That’s