"Ah, but there is no need to be now!" she cried joyfully.
Once more he paused; then he repeated the words.
There was quick attention then in her look, but she showed no fear; and he shifted to easier ground.
"Tell me," he said gently, "how all this came about. How did you come to know the Prince?"
"Only by seeing him at the Court; then I recognized that we had met often before, when I had not known who he was."
"Why should he have concealed it?"
"He did not; one day he told me, and I would not believe him, it seemed so unlikely. Neither did he believe me when I told him who I was; he said that the facts were incompatible, and that mine was the more unlikely story of the two."
"Did you—did you begin liking him very soon?"
"I began by almost hating him. He used to scoff at everything, he seemed not to believe in anything that was good. Almost the first time that we met he told me that the dress I wore was 'provocative'—'a lure of Satan's devising' he called it, and said that nothing tempted men more than for women to wear what he described as 'the uniform of virginity.' He declared that it was because of my dress that he got lost following me through the slums."
"Did not that warn you what sort of man he was?"