Part 56

"Yes--if you call that happiness."

"And you would not be unhappy if I never returned?"

"Oh, no, no! I--that would make me--comparatively--happy!"

"To be married to me, and to know you would never again see me?"

"Yes. Will you?"

"Yes," he said soothingly. And yet a curious little throb of pain flickered in his heart for a moment, that, mad as she undoubtedly was, she should be so happy to be rid of him forever.

He came slowly across the room to the table on which she was sitting. She drew back instinctively, but an ominous ripping held her.

"Are you going for a license and a--a clergyman?" she asked.

"Oh, no," he said gently, "that is not necessary. All we have to do is to take each other's hands--so----"

She shrank back.

"You will have to let me take your hand," he explained.

She hesitated, looked at him fearfully, then, crimson, laid her slim fingers in his.

The contact sent a quiver straight through him; he squared his shoulders and looked at her.... Very, very far away it seemed as though he heard his heart awaking heavily.

What an uncanny situation! Strange--strange--his standing here to humor the mad whim of this stricken maid--this wonderfully sweet young stranger, looking out of eyes so lovely that he almost believed the dead intelligence behind them was quickening into life again.

"What must we do to be married?" she whispered.

"Say so; that is all," he answered gently. "Do you take me for your husband?"

"Yes.... Do you t-take me for your--wife?"

"Yes, dear----"

"Don't say that!... Is it--over?"

"All over," he said, forcing a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and said very gently:

"Will it surprise you to know that you are now a princess?"

"A--what?" she asked sharply.

"A princess." He smiled benignly on her, and, still beaming, struck a not ungraceful attitude.

"I," he said, "am the Crown Prince of Rumtifoo."

She stared at him without a word; gradually he lost countenance; a vague misgiving stirred within him that he had rather overdone the thing.

"Of course," he began cheerfully, "I am an exile in disguise--er-- disinherited and all that, you know."

She continued to stare at him.

"Matters of state--er--revolution--and that sort of thing," he mumbled, eying her; "but I thought it might gratify you to know that I am Prince George of Rumtifoo----"