“Marry her!” said the King. “But that——Oh, damn! Oh Great Scott! That is impossible. You do not understand.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Donovan, “besides being the only possible way out of the hole we are in. And I don’t see the impossibility. If you’re holding back on account of any mediæval European notions about monarchs being a different kind of flesh and blood from other people——”
“It is not that,” said the King.
“If it is,” said Donovan, “you may just go off in a boat and be drowned. I shan’t pity you.”
“But it is not that.” The King jumped about with excitement. “I am a king, it is true. But I am a man of liberated soul. I say ‘Kings, what are kings?’ Democracy is the card to play, the trump. I play it now and always. I have no prejudices. But when you say to me: ‘There is no impossibility, marry Corinne,’ I reply: ‘You do not understand. There is one thing more to reckon with.’ Donovan, you have forgotten——”
“I haven’t forgotten,” said Gorman. “I never get a chance of forgetting. It’s the Emperor, as usual.”
“You have shot the bull in his eye,” said the King. “Donovan, it is that. Gorman knows. There is the Emperor. Therefore I cannot marry Corinne.”
“I’d see that Emperor a long way,” said Donovan, “before I’d allow him to dictate to me.”
“Ah,” said the King, “but you do not understand the Emperor.”
“I don’t believe any one does,” said Gorman.