"I wonder if you will ever rest—if achievement will ever come—at last, if you will ever think your work done——"
"How can I?" he answered. "That is my sole excuse to live—that there is something for me to do—and I am so used to work I think I could not rest——"
"It hath been hard—hard and long," said Mary. "You must be so weary of it all—the lying, the treachery, the weakness, the opposition, the delays, the disappointments——"
The King smiled faintly.
"Yet I have done something——"
"So much!" exclaimed Mary proudly. "But I do long for you to have some leisure now ... for both of us ... to be alone, at last——"
"When the war is over——"
She interrupted gently.
"When the war is over! Alas!" She shook her head. "So long still to wait." She smiled. "I would that you had not been a great man, dear—but just a simple citizen." She laughed charmingly. "And we would live at The Hague always and have a great garden where you should grow 'La Solitaire' for the thousand gulden prize—and I would polish all the furniture myself—and I could call you 'Willem' then before all the world, and we should have long days together ... and you would read of great events in the Gazette and never want to mix in them, and I should laugh at those unhappy kings and queens——"
Her husband looked at her in silence.