rather askance. You see, there
is the tradition to be maintained."

"The tradition?"

"Of royalty--of divine right. We must do nothing to spoil the tradition,
or weaken it, or our people may find out that we are not really
necessary, after all, just as the Americans have done."

Susie glanced at him to see if he was in earnest; but he appeared to be
entirely so.

"Do the exceptions mind being looked askance at?" she questioned.

"No, I do not think they mind in the least. Most of them are too busy to
pay any heed to what other people are thinking about them. Besides, the
cause of the exception is usually a woman, who takes up most of the
exception's leisure time."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"Let me explain. You see, when one of us marries a woman of his own
class--'Prinzessen, Comtessen, Serene English Altessen,' as Svengali
called them--he usually gets a partner more--ah--hidebound, I think you
call it--than himself--a greater stickler for precedent and tradition
and position and etiquette and elegant leisure, and all that sort of
thing. Whatever liberal ideas he may have had, he finds he must abandon
or, at least, suppress, if there is to be peace between his wife and
him. It is only those who are so fortunate as to meet and win exactly
the right woman _out_ of their class who get the incentive. You
understand, now?"

"Yes," said Susie, with a queer catch in her voice. "Yes, I think I do."

"So," he added, with a little bitter laugh, "you see why we others look
askance at these exceptions. In the first place they have preferred to
step down out of their rank for a wife--that deals a blow at the
tradition, and every blow weakens it; in the second place, they have
left some noble lady husbandless, for your noble ladies seldom so far
forget their rank as to marry out of it, though that may be because the
men never permit them to--again an injury to us as a class; and,
finally, they are mixing with the world, they are meeting other men face
to face, as equals, they are claiming no merit because of birth, no
authority because of rank; they are, perhaps, even working with their
hands. Whereas our business is to keep aloof from the world, to maintain
a barrier of caste between ourselves and other men, for they must not
suspect that we are as imperfect as they--that we have the same
appetites and passions, the same defects and meannesses. Our business is
to rule over them, to require their obedience b