Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/320

304 urgency of his dumb pleading, she turned away, and said with a look which betrayed no secrets: "No, Prince Klaus Heinrich, I cannot."

He uttered a cry of grief, and his voice shook, as he asked: "And why can't you?"

She replied: "Because you prevent me."

"How do I prevent you? Please tell me, I beg." And, with the reserved expression still on her face, her eyes dropped on her white reins, and rocking lightly to her horse's walk, she replied: "Through everything, through your conduct, through the way and manner of your being, through your highly distinguished personality. You know well enough how you prevented the poor Countess from letting herself go, and forced her to be clear-brained and reasonable, although it is expressly on the ground of her excessive experiences that the blessing of craziness and oddness has been vouchsafed to her, and that I told you that I was well aware how you had set out to sober her. Yes, I know it well, for you prevent me too from letting myself go, you sober me too, continually, in every way, through your words, through your look, through your way of sitting and standing, and it is quite impossible to have confidence in you. I've had the opportunity of watching you in your intercourse with other people; but whether it was Doctor Sammet in the Dorothea Hospital or Herr Stavenüter in the 'Pheasantry' Tea-garden, it was always the same, and it always made me shiver. You hold yourself erect, and ask questions, but you don't do so out of sympathy, you don't care what the questions are about—no, you don't care about anything, and you lay nothing to heart. I've often seen it—you speak, you express an opinion, but you might just as well express a quite different one, for in reality you have no opinion and no belief, and the only thing you care about is your princely self-possession. You say sometimes that your calling is