“Oh she doesn’t know much about me!” he protested.
“It’s a pity you say that, because she likes you.”
“Yes, she likes me,” he serenely admitted.
Again his hostess hesitated. “And I hope you like her.”
“Aye, she’s a dear old girl!”
The Princess reflected that her visitor was not a gentleman, like Hyacinth; but this made no difference in her present attitude. The expectation that he would be a gentleman had had nothing to do with her interest in him; that had in fact rested largely on his probably finding felicity in a deep indifference to the character. “I don’t know that there’s any one in the world I envy so much,” she observed; a statement that her visitor received in silence. “Better than any one I’ve ever met she has solved the problem—which if we are wise we all try to solve, don’t we?—of getting out of herself. She has got out of herself more perfectly than any one I’ve ever known. She has merged herself in the passion of doing something for others. That’s why I envy her,” she concluded with an explanatory smile, as if perhaps he didn’t understand her.
“It’s an amusement like any other,” said Paul Muniment.
“Ah not like any other! It carries light into dark places; it makes a great many wretched people considerably less wretched.”
“How many, eh?” asked the young man, not exactly as if he wished to dispute but as if it were always in him to enjoy discussing.
The Princess wondered why he should wish to argue at Lady Aurora’s expense. “Well, one who’s very near to you, to begin with.”