She—he, that is to say—was unmarried, and as she wove the chain of the royal quadrille, the hands of half a dozen aspirants to be her prince-consort communicated their hopes in the pressure of finger-tips. A tiara to which the one in the shop window supplied the clue was on her golden-haired head, ropes of pearls clinked as she moved, a great diamond four times the size of the solitary splendour that winked on the dark blue velvet there, scintillated on her breast, and to each of her lovers, the Grand Duke Peter, the Archduke Francis, the Prince Ignatius, she gave the same mysterious little smile, that, while she disdained their passion, yet expressed some faint vibrating response. All men seemed rather alike to her, and she gave a little sigh, half contemptuous of their adoration, half curious about the desire that made them so divinely discontent. To-night she had determined to choose one of them, for, queen though she was, she must conform to the usage of the world, and besides—besides, the thought of bearing a child of her own made some secret nerve ecstatically ache within her. She must choose....
Then, even while Oliver was hesitating between the Archduke Francis and Prince Ignatius, he would catch sight of a flower-seller by the fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and straightway he would be in the country of his petit point again, where lambs were white and lakes blue; or the sight of a draped model with a waxwork head would switch him off into a new amorous adventure with a lady in an orange-coloured dress, just like that, and the point of an infinitesimal shoe peeping seductively from below its hem.
By degrees, this particular figure, standing in royal state alone behind the plate-glass window in Regent Street, began to exercise a controlling influence on his imagination, and he would hurry by the rows of shops which lay on his route without constructing independent romances out of the hints they gave him, and only glancing at them to see what suggestions they supplied as regards Her. He gave her, for instance, the tiara which he had worn when he was queen in his own right; he presented her with some lemon-coloured gloves that reached to her elbow; he bought her daffodils from Piccadilly Circus; and, rather more tentatively, he endowed her with a black hat with Gloire-de-Dijon roses in it; and standing there in front of her, he would hold up to his nose the handkerchief on which he had poured wallflower scent, which he was sure she would use, and inhale a sweetness that really seemed to come from her through the plate-glass window. All other shops which could not contribute to her embellishment became uninteresting again, and once more he would hurry with held breath past the fishmonger, for if was clearly unsuitable to present her with kippers, raw salmon, or even live lobsters. Then, standing a little sideways, not directly in front of her, her eyes met his, and though usually they seemed lost in reverie, occasionally they would meet his own in a way that sent his heart thumping in his throat. Always she wore the same faint, unfathomable smile, reminding him of Leonardo’s “Monna Lisa,” and it seemed to him that the reason for which Nature had brought him into the world was that he should penetrate into the thoughts that set that red mouth so deliciously ajar. It must surely be on his own lips that it would close.... Her loveliness, while she was kind, made the whole world lovely to him, and his whole nature seemed to awake.
His constant day-long walks about London had wonderfully improved his health; he no longer feared the sun and the wind, and got quite bronzed in complexion. Still more remarkable was, so to speak, the psychical bronzing of his mind, the suntan of virility that overspread it; everything was shot with interest for him, and he even got Alice to show him how to work the lathe. For this was no pining and lovelorn affection; it was quite a hopeful affair, and though, when alone, he might sigh and turn over and back again on his bed, the brilliance and upright carriage of the object of his adoration stung him into a manly robustness. She would not like him to go sighing and sheltering himself about the world.
It was no wonder that Alice noticed and applauded the change in him.
“Something has happened to you, Oliver,” she said one night at dinner, while they were cracking walnuts together, for he had aspired to that accomplishment, though it hurt his soft hands very much. “Something has happened to you. I wonder if I can guess what it is?”
He felt quite secure of the secrecy of his passion, and cracked two walnuts.
“I’m quite certain you can’t,” he said. “Lord, that did hurt!”
“Well, I shall do no harm then if I try,” said she. “I believe you’ve fallen in love.”
The convoluted kernels dropped from Oliver’s fingers.