“Lady Grace,” he said, “believe me that is not so. The traditions of our race—the call of the blood, as you put it over here—is as powerful a thing with our aristocratics as with our peasants. We find much here to wonder at and admire, much that, however unwillingly, we are forced to take back and adopt in our own country, but it is a strange atmosphere for us, this. For my country-people there is but one real home, but one motherland.”
“Yet you have seemed so contented over here,” she remarked. “You have entered so easily into all our ways.”
He set down his teacup and smiled at her for a moment gravely.
“I came with a purpose,” he said. “I came in order to observe and to study certain features of your life, but, believe me, I have felt the strain—I have felt it sometimes very badly. These countries, yours especially, are like what one of your great poets called the Lotus-Lands for us. Much of your life here is given to pursuits which we do not understand, to sports and games, to various forms of what we should call idleness. In my country we know little of that. In one way or another, from the Emperor to the poor runner in the streets, we work.”
“Is there nothing which you will regret?” she asked.
“I shall regret the friends I have made,—the very dear friends,” he repeated, “who have been so very much kinder to me than I have deserved. Life is a sad pilgrimage sometimes, because one may not linger for a moment at any one spot, nor may one ever look back. But I know quite well that when I leave here there will be many whom I would gladly see again.”
“There will be many, Prince,” she said softly, “who will be sorry to see you go.”
The Prince rose to his feet. Another little stream of callers had come into the room. Presently he drank his tea and departed. When he reached St. James’ Square, his majordomo came hurrying up and whispered something in his own language.
The Prince smiled.
“I go to see him,” he said. “I will go at once.”