Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/182

 "Like it!" he exclaimed. "Oh, but I can't believe it! Something of the sort has been the dream of my life."

"It is yours if you will have it," said I.

"And the dream of your life will come true," she said. "Fancy that! I didn't know it ever happened." And she glanced at me.

"Yes, the dream of his life shall come true," said I. "You're very fit for it, and I'm very glad to give it to one of your side."

"The King belongs to no party," said she. She paused and added, "And to no person. He stands apart and alone."

I hardly heeded Max's profuse thanks and honest open exultation.

"It's too good to be true," said he.

This has always seemed to me a strange little scene between us three. The accepted conventions of emotion required that it should raise in me and in her a feeling of remorse; for Max was so honest, so simple, so exclusively given over to gratitude. So far as I recollect, however, I had no such feeling, and I do not think that the Countess differed from me in this respect. I was envious of him, not because he took her with him (for he did not take her love), but simply because he had got something he liked, was very pleased, and in a good temper with the world and himself. The dream of his life, as he declared impetuously, was fulfilled. The dream of ours was shattered. How were we to reproach ourselves on his account? It would have been the Quixotry of conscience.

"I daresay you won't like it so much as you think," said I, with a childish desire to make him a little less comfortable.