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 *nestly: "My friend, you are playing a deadly game—and, mark me, you are going to be defeated."

"Your Highness means?" I asked steadily.

"That your ideal is magnificent and worthy of you, full worthy of any Englishman—but impossible."

"I am flattered to hear such words from you," I replied cautiously, but he caught me up and answered sharply:

"For Heaven's sake, Count, don't answer me with any courtly phrasings that come tripping off the lips and mean nothing when spoken. I don't ask you for your confidence, unless you care to give it to me. I'll tell you what I know about you first."

"The Countess Bokara has no doubt"

"Yes, of course she has; she has told me all she knows, or guesses, or suspects, or whatever it may be. But while it was only what she said I did not think of seeing you or interfering with you. But I have learnt it now from another source—one vastly more important. And that's what I mean when I tell you that you are steering straight for the rocks and are dead certain to be shipwrecked. Listen to me. You are in love with the Princess, and naturally enough people credit you with the intention of trying to climb into the throne by"

"It is monstrous," I cried, unable to keep silent.

"I hope your repudiation comes from your heart—I hope it for your own sake; for there is no happiness under such a crown as I wear, Count Benderoff," said the Prince bitterly. "Men think of the dazzle, the pomp, and the grandeur, the magnificence, and forget the dangers, the cares, the awful loneliness. If you seek happiness, seek it not in the glitter of a king's garb, but in the frank enjoyment of true manliness.