"I'm afraid, however," the Prince said, "that I, for some reason, distress you--for which I beg your pardon.

We've always talked so well together--it has been, from the beginning, the greatest pull for me." Nothing so much as such a tone could have quickened her collapse; she felt he had her now at his mercy, and he showed, as he went on, that he knew it.

"We shall talk again, all the same, better than ever--I depend on it too much.

Don't you remember what I told you, so definitely, one day before my marriage ?--that, moving as I did in so many ways among new things, mysteries, conditions, expectations, assumptions different from any I had known, I looked to you, as my original sponsor, my fairy godmother, to see me through.

I beg you to believe," he added, "that I look to you yet." His very insistence had, fortunately, the next moment, affected her as bringing her help; with which, at least, she could hold up her head to speak.