So the Duchess—­secretly sympathetic—­left orders with her French maid that Mary Alice was to be made ready to see the King.

Mary Alice chose the simplest thing that rigorous French maid would allow and kept as close as possible to her own individual and unpretending style.  But even then, she was a pretty resplendent young person as she stole timidly down to find the Duchess and be presented to the King.

The guests were assembled in the great drawing-room, and Mary Alice was frightened almost to death when she saw the splendour of the scene and realized what part she had to play in it.

Then, in a daze, she was swept forward and presented, and found herself looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness.  So she smiled back again, and soon forgot the onlookers, answering His Majesty’s kindly questions.

[Illustration:  “. . . found herself looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness.”]

He turned from her, presently, to speak to some one else, and Mary Alice caught sight then of a face she knew.  For an instant, she stood staring.  For an instant, he stood staring back, as unbelieving as she.

Then, “You seem to be on friendly terms with His Majesty,” he said.  “Have you showed him how to play the game, too?”

“No,” Mary Alice answered, “but I’ve told him the Secret.”

As soon as they could, they escaped—­those two—­out on to the terrace where the stars were shining thickly overhead.

“On one of those—­those times in New York when we talked together,” he said, “you told me that when something very marvellous had happened to you and you couldn’t believe you were awake, that it was really true, you asked your Godmother to pinch you.  It—­er, wouldn’t be at all proper for me to ask you to please pinch me.  But if you know any perfectly proper equivalent, I wish you’d do it.”

“I’ve pinched myself,” she returned, “and it seems I am awake.  So I judge you must be, too.”

“Then how, please——?”

And she told him.

“And you don’t know yet who I am?”

“No.”

So he told her.  “I warned you it was nothing interesting,” he said; “it is just my work that people are interested in.  I don’t belong in there,” indicating the great house, “any more than you do.  They like me for a novelty, because I’ve dared and suffered; and because, as things turned out, I was in a position to do what they are pleased to call a great service to the Empire.  I wish I liked them better—­they want to be very kind to me, and I was born of them, so they like me the better for that.  But I’ve been in the wilderness too much—­I can’t get used to these strange folk at home.”

“I used to think I couldn’t get used to strange folk,” Mary Alice murmured, “but I seem to have got on fairly well for a girl from Nowhere.”

“Was it the Secret?”

She nodded.