'Let your youth alone!' the Dictator said, with a half-melancholy smile. 'So long as time lets it alone—and even time will do that for some years yet.'
Then he stopped and felt a little as if he had been preaching a sermon to the girl.
'Come,' she broke in upon his moralisings, 'if I am so dreadfully young, at least I'll have the benefit of my immaturity. If I am to be treated as a child, I must have a child's freedom from conventionality.' She dragged forward a heavy armchair lined with the soft, mellowed, dull red leather which one sees made into cushions and sofa-pillows in the shops of Nuremberg's more artistic upholsterers, and then at its side on the carpet she planted a footstool of the same material and colour. 'There,' she said, 'you sit in that chair.'
'And you, what are you going to do?'
'Sit first, and I will show you.'
He obeyed her and sat in the great chair. 'Well, now?' he asked.
'I shall sit here at your feet.' She flung herself down and sat on the footstool.
'Here is my throne,' she said composedly; 'bid kings come bow to it.'
'Kings come bowing to a banished Republican?'
'You are my King,' she answered, 'and so I sit at your feet and am proud and happy. Now talk to me and tell me some more.'