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——­”

“What!”

The silence was deadly.

“Do you know,” she said deliberately, “that I believe you think I am mentally unsound. Do you?”

“I—­you—­” he began to stutter fearfully.

“Do you?”

“W-well, either you or I——­”

“Nonsense!  I thought that marriage ceremony was a miserably inadequate affair!...  And I am hurt—­grieved—­amazed that you should do such a—­a cowardly——­”

“What!” he exclaimed, stung to the quick.

“Yes, it is cowardly to deceive a woman.”

“I meant it kindly—­supposing——­”

“That I am mentally unsound?  Why do you suppose that?”

“Because—­Good Heavens—­because in this century, and in this city, people who never before saw one another don’t begin to talk of marrying——­”

“I explained to you”—­she was half crying now, and her voice broke deliciously—­“I told you what I’d done, didn’t I?”

“You said you had got a spark,” he admitted, utterly bewildered by her tears.  “Don’t cry—­please don’t.  Something is all wrong here—­there is some terrible misunderstanding.  If you will only explain it to me——­”