most delicate move in all my difficult game. I had to keep the princess devoted to me—and yet indifferent to me; I had to show affection for her—and not feel it. I had to make love for another, and that to a girl who—princess or no princess—was the most beautiful I had ever seen. Well, I braced myself to the task, made no easier by the charming embarrassment with which I was received. How I succeeded in carrying out my programme will appear hereafter.
"You are gaining golden laurels," she said. "You are like the prince in Shakspere who was transformed by becoming king. But I'm forgetting you are king, sire."
"I ask you to speak nothing but what your heart tells you—and to call me nothing but my name."
She looked at me for a moment.
"Then I'm glad and proud, Rudolf," said she. "Why, as I told you, your very face is changed."
I acknowledged the compliment, but I disliked the topic; so I said:
"My brother is back, I hear. He made an excursion, didn't he?"
