they had been rather strangers to each other. Now, however, having
decided to speak, the King also decided that he must go on and
interfere. It required some moral courage; for he had never failed to
recognize his son as the stronger character, and, especially in
intellectual matters, his superior.

"I have been told that you have been keeping a mistress," he said,
avoiding the young man's eye.

"That," answered Max, "would, I suppose, be the generally received
phrase for it."

"Who is she?" queried the King, pushing hazardously on, now that the
danger-point had been reached.

"Do you wish to meet her?"

Parental dignity was offended.

"That is a suggestion you ought not to make."

"Then, my dear father, why inquire after her? She and I suit each other:
to you she is nothing."

"How long has this been going on?"

"We have lived together for five years."

The King recalled a phrase that he had recently heard authoritatively
spoken--"a relationship of long standing. Morally, of course, that only
makes the matter worse."

"H'm!" he said aloud. "You started early, I must say!"

"You, sir, at that age were already a father," said Max correctively.

The King made an interjectory movement, but the Prince went on. "I was
twenty, and I was still virginal. To speak frankly, I was amazed at
myself, perhaps even amused. Yes, even now I am inclined to think that,
among princes, my record must have been exceptional. This lady, to whom
I owe nearly the whole of my domestic experience, saved me from an
adventuress----"

The King lifted his eyebrows.

"One," went on the Prince, "who would have wrung from me in a single
year far more, from a merely monetary point of view, than the whole
experience has yet cost me."

The King was slightly bewildered. "This person," he said tentatively,
"is not, then, of the adventuress class?"

"Nor was that other: by class she was one of the highest of our
aristocracy. I believe that when she is received at Court it is correct
etiquette for you to kiss her upon the cheek. The lady who did actually
befriend me was her companion and secretary, an Austrian by birth. She
had divorced her husband and possessed only a small annuity on which she
was unable to live independently in the style to which she had become
accustomed. Yet for the first year of our liaison she would accept from
me no provision, and we saw each other but seldom. Strange as it may
seem she taught me the value and the