"Where is his mother?"
"In her room. She sees no one. It is a foreign fashion, you know. She is suffering deeply—at last."
"Oh, this is horrible!" I said. "Can nothing be done?"
"Do you observe what a perfect accent he has?" she said, meditatively. "There must be excellent teachers at the lycée!"
From the bed came occasionally muttered scraps of French prose or poetry, and I shuddered as I listened.
"Sacrificed for an accent!" she went on to herself. "It is a favourite amusement of American mothers. This boy was torn from a father whom he worshipped. I wonder what he will say when his wife returns to America with two living children and one—" She turned to me. "I could have told her that growing children should not be hurried from one country to another. Yet it is better this way than the other."
"The other?" I repeated, stupidly.
"Yes, the other,—after years of residence abroad, no home, no country, no attachments, a weary traveller till one dies. I thought you might like to see him, as you were so attracted by him. He fainted the day you left, and has been this way ever since. It cannot last much longer."
We had been speaking in a low tone, yet our voices must have been heard by the sleeper, for suddenly he turned his head on the pillow and looked at us.
The princess approached him, and murmured his name in an exquisitely soft and gentle voice. The boy recognised her.