“Will you listen to a fable?” she demanded suddenly.
“Is it a little thing of your own? Of course I shall listen.”
“Once there was a princess—”
“Dear me!” I cried. “I’m sorry for that. Doesn’t a story that begins with a heroine instead of with a hero always end sadly?”
“This is a fable,” she said. “It was a long time ago, when the heroine could be named Maud, though this heroine was not. Well, the princess fell in love with a prince.”
“Do you mean first?” I asked.
“I know what you will say,” she continued, not heeding my interruption. “She should not have loved the prince. She should have loved some romantically impossible person. Anyway, she loved the prince; and more absurd still, the prince loved the princess. You can see how much more artistic it would have been for the prince to have been indifferent. He might at least have had the artistic decency to love the other princess—or to think that he did, which would have done for a while; but he was a nice prince, and he loved the princess. At least, you will say, there should be a parental obstacle, an old fool of a king with other plans. Or it might be an ill-tempered queen with a bad complexion. She would have been useful in a good many ways. But, no; not a single relative opposed either the prince or the princess.”
“Then what on earth did they do?” I asked.
“Happily there appeared a sinister little dwarf. I don’t remember where he came from, but he was U. C. in the nick of time or heaven knows what would have happened. ‘See here,’ said the dwarf, ‘she will be perfectly insufferable if you act in this way. Women are not what they used to be.’ ‘Oh, come now,’ said the prince, ‘I have heard that before.’ ‘I assure you,’ persisted the dwarf, ‘that what women get easily they don’t value at all. You will make her think there are no other fish in the sea. She will expect too much of you. You will never be able to live up to the situation. Moreover, she never will feel the delight of possession that comes after doubt and difficulty. She will sigh for something that can come only after the sweet agony of deferred hope.’ ‘Aren’t you getting rather deep?’ asked the prince. But the dwarf held to the point. ‘Whom Love loveth he perplexeth. First make her doubt,’ he said, ‘or she never will believe.’ Then the dwarf went to the heroine. ‘Your Highness,’ he began, then dropped his flourish, and stepping close to her, whispered: ‘You are making a great mistake. You never can hold the prince. You act like a shop girl who has won the floor walker. You have the engaged look in its most silly form. You threw yourself at him. You know you did. He knows you did. When you are securely married he will act accordingly. Your mother was frantic for him, and has done her best to help you make yourself ridiculous. Everybody is tittering over the way you dote on him. Don’t be a fool.’ Well, if either the prince or the princess had been marrying for policy this chatter would have done no harm. But they were marrying for love, and love has nerves. Love lacks that conservative leash that lies in an extraneous motive; and by an absurd chance the dwarf precipitated an actual quarrel, the prince got to flirting with a middle-aged duchess whom he despised, and the princess, in a jealous fit, gave a peevish, mischief-making dowager aunt the opportunity she long had been looking for, and the match was broken off.”
“Well,” I asked patiently, “who was the dwarf?”