"I do not know," said the Prince disconsolately. "I fear that he will consider birth and position of more importance than youth and beauty. Besides, there are some things a man likes to do for himself. My poor sister, now...."
He stopped, for, under the stimulus of Miss Vard's sympathy, he found himself about to betray a family secret.
"Yes, I can understand that," said Kasia, with more tenderness than she had yet shown. "You don't mind my talking frankly to you?"
"I love to be talked frankly to," protested the Prince.
This was very far from the truth, only the Prince didn't know it. What he really loved was flattery disguised as frankness. In this, he resembled most other human beings.
"Well, then," said Kasia, "if you don't like it, if you find it intolerable, why don't you cut and run?"
"Cut and run?"
"Yes; go away by yourself, be a free man, and marry the woman you love. For of course there is such a woman?"
"Oh, yes," and the Prince thought of the blue-eyed daughter of the shopkeeper in the Friedrichstrasse, just off Unter den Linden; however, he had never thought of marriage in connection with her. "But suppose I should do that," he added, "how should I live?"
"How do other men live? By work!"