em rather than marry any one I don't care
for. I couldn't do it even to please you, papa, so you may be quite
sure I couldn't do it to please the king.

"And now let me look at you, Monsieur Rupert. I talked to you last
night, but I did not fairly look at you. Yes, you are really very
little altered except that you have grown into a man: but I should
have known you anywhere. Now, would you have known me?"

"Not if I had met you in the street," Rupert said. "When I talk to
you, and look at you closely, Mademoiselle Adele Dessin comes back
again; but at a casual glance you are simply Mademoiselle Adele de
Pignerolles."

"I wish I were Adele Dessin again," she said. "I should be a
thousand times happier living with my father than in this
artificial court, where no one is what they seem to be; where
everyone considers it his duty to say complimentary things; where
everyone seems to be gay and happy, but everyone is as much slaves
as if they wore chains. I break out sometimes, and astonish them."

A slight smile passed over Rupert's face; and Adele knew that he
had overheard her the evening before. The girl flushed hotly. Her
father and Madame de Soissons were talking together in a deep bay
window at the end of the room.

"So you heard me last night, Monsieur Rupert. Well, there is
nothing to be ashamed of. You were my hero when I was a child; I
don't mind saying so now. If you had made me your heroine it would
have been different, but you never did, one bit. Now don't try to
tell stories. I should find you out in a moment; I am accustomed to
hear falsehoods all day."

"There is nothing to be ashamed of, mademoiselle. Every one must
have a hero, and I was the only boy you knew. No one could have
misunderstood you; and even to those artificial fops who were
standing round you, there seemed nothing strange or unmaidenly in
your avowal that when you were a little girl you made a hero of a
boy. You are quite right, I did not make a heroine of you. Boys, I
think, always make heroines of women much older than themselves. I
looked upon you as a dear, bright little girl, whom I would have
cared for and protected as I would my favourite dog. Some boys are
given to heroine worship. I don't think that is my line. I am only
just getting out of my boyhood now, and I have never had a heroine
at all."

So they sat and chatted, easily and pleasantly, as if four years
had been rolled back, and they were boy and girl again in the
g