"My dear young lady," I protested, "I do not think that you must say that. Your mother's conditions are necessary. In fact, whether she made them or not, I think that they would be inevitable."
"You are not even to come to Illghera with us? Not to visit us even?"
I shook my head.
"I belong to the great family of Bohemians," I reminded her, "who have no possessions and but one dress suit. What should I do at Court?"
"What indeed!" she answered, with a little sigh, "for you are a citizen of the greater world!"
"There is no such thing," I answered. "We carry our own world with us. We make it small or large with our own hands."
"For some," she murmured, "the task then is very difficult. Where one lives in a forcing-house of conventions, and the doors are fast locked, it is very easy to be stifled, but it is hard indeed to breathe."
"Princess," I said gravely, "have you examined the windows?"
"I do not understand you," she answered.
"But it is simple, surely," I declared. "Even if you must remain in the forcing-house, it is for you to open the windows and breathe what air you will. For your thoughts at least are free, and it is of our thoughts that our lives are fashioned."