The Prince looked up.
“What can we have to say to one another, Mynheer John de Witt?”
“Not much, perhaps, but something.… I think we meet for the last time.”
There was a difference also in de Witt. His late illness and his distresses had left him wasted, lined and worn; his old stateliness remained, but at times his voice shook and broke a little.
As he spoke he seated himself with a fatigued air.
“I cannot frame into sentences what there is between us, Highness.”
The Prince spoke suddenly, almost fiercely—
“Do you know me now, Mynheer? Do you see what manner of man I am? You need not have feared.”
John de Witt looked at him earnestly and sadly.