“And to think that it is yours!”

“It is this room that gives me the right to be hailed with ’Long live the Princess!’ Not with campaign yells and ’Hurrah for Yetive!’ How does that sound?  ‘Hurrah for Yetive!’” She was laughing merrily.

“Don’t say it!  It sounds sacrilegious—­revolting!”

“For over three years—­since I was eighteen—­I have been supreme in that chair.  During the years of my reign prior to that time I sat there with my Uncle Caspar standing beside me.  How often I begged him to sit down with me!  There was so much room and he certainly must have grown tired of standing.  One time I cried because he frowned at me when I persisted in the presence of a great assemblage of nobles from Dawsbergen.  It seems that it was a most important audience that I was granting, but I thought more of my uncle’s tired old legs.  I remember saying, through my sobs of mortification, that I would have him beheaded.  You are to guess whether that startling threat created consternation or mirth.”

“What a whimsical little princess you must have been, weeping and pouting and going to sleep,” he laughed.  “And how sedate and wise you have become.”

“Thank you.  How very nice you are.  I knave felt all along that some one would discern my effort to be dignified and sedate.  They say I am wise and good and gracious, but that is to be expected.  They said that of sovereigns as far back as the deluge, I’ve heard.  Would you really like to see me in that old chair?” she asked.

“Ah, you are still a woman,” he said, smiling at her pretty vanity.  “Nothing could impress me more pleasantly.”

She stepped carelessly and impulsively upon the royal platform, leaned against the arm of the throne, and with the charming blush of consciousness turned to him with the quickness of a guilty conscience, eager to hear his praise but fearful lest he secretly condemned her conceit.  His eyes were burning with the admiration that knows no defining, and his breath came quick and sharp through parted lips.  He involuntarily placed a foot upon the bottom step as if to spring to her side,

“You must not come up here!” she cried, shrinking back, her hands extended in fluttering remonstrance.  “I cannot permit that, at all!”

“I beg your pardon,” he cried, “That is all the humble plebeian can say.  That I may be more completely under this fairy spell, pray cast about yourself the robe of rank and take up the sceptre.  Perhaps I may fall upon my face.”

“And hurt your head all over again,” she said, laughing nervously.  She hesitated for a moment, a perplexed frown crossing her brow.  Then she jerked a rich robe from the back of the throne and placed it about her shoulders as only a woman can.  Taking up the scepter she stood before the great chair, and, with a smile on her lips, held it above his head, saying softly: 

“Graustark welcomes the American prince.”