"I think so too," said the Prince; and he shut her mouth with a kiss.
"And now," said the Prince some time afterwards, "let us go to that old sinner Fritzing."
Priscilla hung back, reluctant to deal this final blow to the heart that had endured so many. "He'll be terribly shocked," she said.
But the Prince declared it had to be done; and hand in hand they went out into the street, and opening Fritzing's door stood before him.
He was still absorbed in his Æschylus, had been sitting absorbed in the deeds of the dead and departed, of the long dead Xerxes, the long dead Darius, the very fish, voiceless but voracious, long since as dead as the most shredded of the sailors,—he had been sitting absorbed in these various corpses all the while that in the next room, on the other side of a few inches of plaster and paper, so close you would have thought his heart must have burned within him, so close you would have thought he must be scorched, the living present had been pulsing and glowing, beating against the bright bars of the future, stirring up into alertness a whole row of little red-headed souls till then asleep, souls with golden eyelashes, souls eager to come and be princes and princesses of—I had almost revealed the mighty nation's name. A shadow fell across his book, and looking up he saw the two standing before him hand in hand.
Priscilla caught her breath: what white anguish was going to flash into his face when he grasped the situation? Judge then of her amazement, her hesitation whether to be pleased or vexed, to laugh or cry, when, grasping it, he leaped to his feet and in tones of a most limitless, a most unutterable relief, shouted three times running "Gott sei Dank!"
CONCLUSION
So that was the end of Priscilla's fortnight,—according to the way you look at it glorious or inglorious. I shall not say which I think it was; whether it is better to marry a prince, become in course of time a queen, be at the head of a great nation, be surfeited with honour, wealth, power and magnificence till the day when Death with calm, indifferent fingers strips everything away and leaves you at last to the meek simplicity of a shroud; or whether toilsome paths, stern resistances, buffetings bravely taken, battles fought inch by inch, an ideal desperately clung to even though in clinging you are slain, is not rather the part to be chosen of him whose soul would sit attired with stars. Anyhow the goddess laughed, the goddess who had left Priscilla in the lurch, when she heard the end of the adventure; and her unpleasant sister, having nothing more to do in Creeper Cottage, gathered up her rags and grinned too as she left it. At least her claws had lacerated much over-tender flesh during her stay; and though the Prince had interrupted the operation and forced her for the moment to inactivity, she was not dissatisfied with what had been accomplished.