"I am to be all alone?" His tone invited commiseration, while his brain soared with the dreams of a hashish-eater.
"I think about three may be with you, not more," she said, letting him down to earth again.
"Why are you so confident about me?"
Her gentle gray eyes met his with friendly understanding.
"When I found out who you were," she said, "I saw"—then she hesitated—"I saw that you had the rare gift of doing naturally what one would never expect."
"In what way?"
"To begin with, in coming here at all. And then you did things which, I imagine, no prince ever did before, and did them quite easily—'for fun,' I suppose you would say. Well, if you could do all that for fun, what might you not do when you became serious? A man who doesn't mind being laughed at—whatever his position—is very rare."
"Ah!" cried Max, "but now you are giving me more credit than I deserve. You set me to do ridiculous things for you—ridiculous, I mean, in one dressed as I was for fashion and not for use—I was aware of it; but nobody was aware of me. When I come here into these poor streets, I am so unexpected that nobody recognizes me. If they thought that they did, they would not believe their eyes. In that alone there is a sense of enlargement and liberty which those who have not to live in our position can hardly realize. It was like holiday; I felt as though I had been let loose."
"And so became more yourself?"
"I cannot say; but I was happy while I was here. Why did you send me away?"