“Will you pardon me if I am?” asked Alistair. “It is easy for some men to be frank; but when I am frank I find I only shock good people.”
“But why should that be so? Are you sure that when you are shocking good people, as you put it, it is your true self that is speaking?”
“Madam, I do not know what is my true self; or if I have got one any longer. I used to have one when I was a boy, but twenty years of enforced hypocrisy have pretty well knocked it out of me.”
The Princess sighed, and paused for a moment.
“Perhaps I can help you to find it. Do you really love the woman you are living with?”
“No.” The truth came up from the depth of his consciousness, exploded by surprise.
“Then why don’t you leave her?”
It was Alistair’s turn to pause.
“She has given up everything for me. Sometimes I think I ought to marry her.”
“What had she to give up?”