affection, but simply because in the round of their official
lives they so seldom met privately; and since the Prince had acquired an
establishment of his own the King knew little of what he did with his
daily life beyond the records of the Court Circular.

Max was now twenty-five; he was taller and darker than his father, more
handsome and more self-possessed. In his appearance he combined the
polish of a military training with the quiet air of an amateur scholar;
his forehead was prematurely, but quite becomingly, bald, his mustache
well groomed, his figure slight but athletic. He had inherited his
father's full lips, but the glance of his eye was of a keener and
shrewder quality, and it might be suspected that the eye-glasses
which he occasionally put on were assumed more for effect than for
necessity. Above all, he possessed what the King conspicuously
lacked--self-assurance, and with it a sort of moral ease as though any
error he might fall into would be taken rather as an experience to
profit by than as an occasion for self-reproach. His face showed as he
talked that quality of humor which enables a man to laugh at his own
enthusiasms, and one could not always be sure whether he were serious or
merely indulging in dialectics. To any one out of touch with his
intellectual origins, he was a man difficult to know; and the King,
being in that matter altogether at sea, knew really very little about
him, and was in consequence a little afraid of him.

That fact made a frontal attack difficult; nevertheless, having screwed
himself up to speak, he began abruptly.

"Max," said his father, "have you ever thought about marrying?"

Max smiled a little bitterly. "I started thinking about it," he said,
"when I was seventeen; and off and on I have thought about it ever
since." Then he added rather coldly, as though to warn off mere
curiosity, "Why do you ask, sir? Has any proposal been made?"

"Well," said his father, "we might certainly arrange something. I feel,
indeed, that we ought to--at your age. I only wanted first to know how
you felt upon the matter. You see," he added, hesitating, "people are
beginning to talk; and it won't do."

This oblique and cautious reference to his son's private life marked a
new stage in their relations: it was actually the first occasion, in all
their intercourse as father and son, upon which the sex-question had
ever been broached between them. It was no wonder, therefore, that so
far