se she never called."

"This one," suggested the Princess, "would be prettier if she were not
so thin; and she wouldn't have to wear shirtwaists if you married her.
She makes them herself, you know. Why did the other one run away?"

"That's just the difficulty. I can't remember." He wished sincerely
within himself that he might; it seemed it would have served him somehow
with Miss Dassonville. "I've been very ill," he apologized.

"Anyway, you'd be getting what everybody wants."

"And that is----"

"A woman of your own ... understanding and care ... and children. I was
in the church with you ... you saw----"

"But I don't want to talk about it."

"What do you want then?"

"To be the prince in a fairy tale, I suppose," Peter sighed.

"Oh, you're all of that to _her_. The half god--the unmatched wonder.
When she watched your coming across the water this morning--_I_ know the
look that should go to a slayer of dragons. It seems to me," said the
Princess severely, "it is you who are running away."

She was wise enough to leave him with that view of it though it was not
by any means leaving him more comfortable. He tried for relief to
figure himself as by the Princess' suggestion, he must seem to Savilla
Dassonville. But if he was really such to her why could he not then play
the Deliverer in fact, rescue her from untended illness, from meagreness
and waste? Why not, in short, marry her, except for a reason--oh, there
was reason enough if he could only remember it!

He heard Luigi moving softly in the room behind, and presently when the
door clicked he rose and went in and taking the lamp held it high over
him, turning with it fronting the huge mirror in its gilded frame. If
there were a good reason why he couldn't marry Savilla Dassonville, he
ought to have found it in his own lean frame, the face more drawn than
was justified by his years, lined about the eyes, the hand that held the
accusing lamp broadened by labours that no scrupulosity of care denied.
Weatheral, of Weatheral, Lessing & Co., unaccomplished, unaccustomed. He
put down the lamp heavily, leaning forward in his chair as he covered
his face with his hands and groaned in them, fully remembering.

X

He had been sitting just so in his library with the lamp behind him and
the hollow flare of the coals making an excellent starting place for the
House which was now so near him that the mere exhibition in shop windows
of the stuffs with which