ble to trust me at all."

This set her smiling. "I had the advantage to begin with of not knowing
who you were."

"And that gave you a start."

"No, finding you out gave me the start."

"You certainly have not lost time."

"That I cannot say, till I have your answer." There was no temporizing
here.

Max thought for a while, then drew breath and spoke. "I want you quite
to understand," he said, "that if I take up this work it will be very
largely for a personal reason. I daresay I shall, as you say, 'take
fire' when I know more about it; but at present I am not so moved.
Commissions do not attract me; and what I undertake I shall do solely on
faith--faith in you. Are you content that it should be so?"

"For a beginning, yes."

"Very well; something else follows. I shall need you for my guide."

"I am always here at certain hours," she said. "But there are others who
know far more than I."

He let that point go unregarded.

"Then I may come to you for help?"

"Always, if really you need it."

"My needs shall be as real as I can make them," said Max. "How am I to
begin?"

She named one or two books. "If you follow up what you read there," she
said, "you will find most of it practically demonstrated in this
district alone. For instance, we have a strike on just now among our
tailors and shirt-makers; the men have made the women come out with
them; they did not want to--women can exist under conditions where men
cannot. Go and mix with them, be among them for hours, attend their
street-corner meetings; you will hardly hear two ideas of any practical
value, but you will get many. It isn't theory that is wanted,--it is
that the life which thousands are living should be known and realized.
When the eye has seen, the heart follows. All we really want is
brotherhood; but how are we to bring it about?"

"From that I am furthest away of all," said Prince Max.

"No, no," she cried; "that is the great mistake! If kings are not the
very symbol of our community then they have no value left. May I tell
you two of the most kingly things I ever heard done in the present day?
The one was by the old King of Montenegro, the smallest of the Balkan
States. He found that his chief gentry were becoming lazy, too proud to
put their hands to labor--making idleness a class distinction. He sat
down in the courtyard of his palace and began to make shoes, and went on
making them daily while he held his Court and administered justi