essful struggle. You will remember I came to you starving and
penniless."

The Princess grew white and her delicate nostrils quivered.

"Et monsieur votre pere--" she checked herself. "And your father, what
do you say he is?"

Paul motioned to Silas to speak.

"I, Madam," said the latter, "am a self-made man, and by the
establishment of fried-fish shops all over London and the great
provincial towns, have, by the grace of God, amassed a considerable
fortune."

"Fried fish?" said the Princess in a queer voice.

Silas looked at her out of his melancholy and unhumorous eyes.

"Yes, Madam."

"I have also learned," said Paul, "that my grandmother was a Sicilian
who played a street-organ. Hence my Italian blood."

Jane, standing by the door with Barney Bill, most agonized of old men,
wholly nervous, twisting with gnarled fingers the broken rim of his
hard felt hat, turned aside so that no one but Bill should see a sudden
gush of tears. For she had realized how drab and unimportant she was in
the presence of the great and radiant lady; also how the great and
radiant lady was the God-sent mate for Paul, never so great a man as
now when he was cutting out his heart for truth's sake.

"I should like to tell you what my life has been," continued Paul, "in
the presence of those who know it already. That's why I asked them to
stay. Until an hour ago I lived in dreams. In my own fashion I was an
honest man. But now I've got this knowledge of my origin, the dreams
are swept away and I stand naked to myself. If I left you, Miss
Winwood, and Colonel Winwood, who have been so good to me--and Her
Highness, who has deigned to honour me with her friendship--in a
moment's doubt as to my antecedents I should be an impostor."

"No, no, my boy," said Colonel Winwood, who was standing with hands
deep in trouser pockets and his head bent, staring at the carpet. "No
words like that in this house. Besides, why should we want to go into
all this?"

He had the Englishman's detestation of unpleasant explanations. Ursula
Winwood supported him.

"Yes, why?" she asked.

"But it would be very interesting," said the Princess slowly, cutting
her words.

Paul met her eyes, which she had hardened, and saw beneath them pain
and anger and wounded pride and repulsion. For a second he allowed an
agonized appeal to flash through his. He knew that he was deliberately
killing the love in her heart. He felt the monstrous cruelty of it. A
momentar