“And may I ask what was that idiotic remark you just made about this not being the first time you have kissed my hand? Why, you had never so much as set eyes on me until a moment ago!”
“I have kissed your hand in a dream,” said the young writer gravely, and then he told how one afternoon he had seen her hand and in her hand a flower, and how he had woven such a web of romance about that hand and flower that he had never a wink of sleep from night to night.
“But you must sleep!” cried the young Princess. “Oh, dear, and so you are miserable, too! Ah, the misery of vain desire, and oh, the misery of delight cut short! But you certainly must get some sleep to-night. You can’t be allowed to go about kissing women’s hands as prettily as you do and getting no sleep for your pains. Now wait here a few moments while I go and get you some aspirin.”
But the youth dissuaded her, asking her how she could have the heart to put an aspirin between them when he had dared all the legal penalties for trespass for the sake of speech with her, nay, even for sight of her.
“Well, I think you are very bold,” sighed she, but he humbly protested that never was a man less bold than he by ordinary, but that the fires of chivalry had burned high in him at sight of her hand at the window, for, said he, could any but an unhappy heart sit with a hand drooping out of a window on the only sunny afternoon of an English summer?
“There is certainly something in that,” said the young Princess, and then she told him how miserable she was and how miserable she must always be, for her heart was engaged in a battle with superior odds. And she made him sit beside her on the bench of cedarwood, telling him of her father and mother and the gay Court of Valeria, “which is so gay,” she said, “that some of the most respectable ladies of the Court are goaded into getting themselves divorced just for the sake of the peace and quiet of being déclassée.”
And she told how it was to this Court that one fine day there came an English lord with the very best introductions and such very excellent white waist-coats for evening wear as were the envy of every cavalier in Valeria.
“Like this one of mine?” asked the young gentleman, for is he a proper man who will not belittle another by claiming an equal degree of eminence in the sartorial abyss?
“That is not the point,” said the Princess Baba, “but the point is that my Lord Quorn, for such was my lover’s name, was the handsomest man I ever saw, and I loved him and he loved me and I lost him and he lost me. That may seem a very reasonable combination of events to you, who are young and cynical, but to me it was a matter of the utmost wretchedness. My friend, know that this English lord had to fly for his life, for a jealous lady of the Court had gone to my parents saying he had seduced me.”
“The liar!” cried our hero.