“Yes, I know. Hyacinth has told me. Do you mention it as a guarantee, so that I may know you’re sound?”
“Not exactly; that would be weak, wouldn’t it?” the Princess asked. “My soundness must be in myself—a matter for you to appreciate as you know me better; not in my references and vouchers.”
“I shall never know you better. What business is it of mine?”
“I want to help you,” she said; and as she made this earnest appeal her face became transfigured: it wore an expression of the most passionate yet the purest longing. “I want to do something for the cause you represent; for the millions who are rotting under our feet—the millions whose whole life is passed on the brink of starvation, so that the smallest accident pushes them over. Try me, test me; ask me to put my hand to something, to prove that I’m as deeply in earnest as those who have already given proof. I know what I’m talking about—what one must meet and face and count with, the nature and the immensity of your organisation. I’m not trifling. No, I’m not trifling.”
Paul Muniment watched her with his steady smile until this sudden outbreak had spent itself. “I was afraid you’d be like this—that you’d turn on the fountains and let off the fireworks.”
“Permit me to believe you thought nothing about it. There’s no reason my fireworks should disturb you.”
“I have always had a fear of clever women.”
“I see—that’s a part of your prudence,” said the Princess reflectively. “But you’re the sort of man who ought to know how to use them.”
He made no immediate answer to this; the way he appeared to regard her suggested that he was not following closely what she said so much as losing himself in certain matters which were beside that question—her beauty, for instance, her grace, her fragrance, the spectacle of a manner and quality so new to him. After a little, however, he brought out irrelevantly: “I’m afraid I’m awfully rude.”
“Of course you are, but it doesn’t signify. What I mainly object to is that you don’t meet my questions. Wouldn’t some one else do Hyacinth Robinson’s work quite as well? Is it necessary to take a nature so delicate, so intellectual? Oughtn’t we to keep him for something finer?”