While the King and the Prime Minister had thus been giving each other shocks of a somewhat unpleasant character, Prince Max had received a far pleasanter one. Only a week after the holding of the King's court the lady of his dreams had written asking for an interview.

The letter was not dated from the Archbishop's palace, but from the Home of the Little Lay-Sisters; and it was thither that he repaired, in order to forestall her humble yet amazing offer to wait upon him.

In the bare, conventual parlor, with high walls that echoed resoundingly and boards that smelt of soap, they met once more face to face and alone. She courtesied low, addressed him formally as "sir," and thanked him with due deference for coming; otherwise there was no change in her demeanor. The flat-frilled cap showed within its border a delicate ripple of hair, and above the fair breastplate of linen the face shone with tender warmth like a white rose resting upon snow; and as her lips moved in speech he re-encountered with a fervor of delight that curious quality of look which had ever haunted his dreams—a communicativeness not limited to words. Though it remained still her whole face spoke to him; lips and eyes made music together—a harmony of two senses in alliance, as into morning mist comes the yet unrisen light and the hidden singing of birds.

And yet all the while she was but saying quite ordinary things, making brief the embarrassment of this their first meeting since their relative positions had become explained.

"I have taken you at your word, sir," she began. "When we last met you asked if you could not be useful. Now you can."

"Your remembrance makes me grateful," said the Prince.

"Perhaps I ought not to be so confident," she went on, "since the idea is only my own. It came from something I heard my father saying; and as he strongly disapproves of women taking part in politics it was no use saying anything to him."

"Oh, politics?" That explanation rather surprised him.

"Sometimes—just now and then," explained Sister Jenifer, "politics do touch social needs: and to their detriment."

"My acquaintance with politics," answered the Prince, "is very—Chimerical," he added after a pause, pleased to have found the term.

"Yes," she smiled, "I have heard you. You are full of happy ideas, many of them somewhat contradictory; but you have not yet fallen into any groove. To you freedom means rebellion; you represent no vested interest."

"Is that my certificate of character?"

"I had not finished," she said. "I was keeping the best to the last. You have a great position and an open mind."

"An important combination, you think?"

"An unusual one."

"And so you have an unusual proposition to make to me?"

"Yes, I suppose you will think so. There is a brand I want plucked from the burning—a Royal Commission saved from becoming merely official and useless."

"What is its subject?"

"All this!"—she made an inclusive gesture—"slums, the conditions of sweated labor, the daily material which we have to work on."

"About which you have taught me that I know really nothing."

"You said you were anxious to learn. At least half of that Commission will be anxious not to learn—or not to let others."

"Then you ought to be on it."

"No woman is on it."

"You wish them to be?"

She threw out her hands. "What would be the use? Their voices would have no weight."

"Whose would?"

"Yours," she said; and, eyeing him full, stopped dead.

"You wish me to go upon that Commission?" cried Prince Max.

"Yes."

"In spite of all my ignorance?"

"The sittings do not begin till late autumn; between now and then you could get more actual knowledge—brought home and made visible to you, I mean—than most of those who will form its majority."

"Then you think I could be of use?"

She looked at him, silent for a moment. "I think you have a mind capable of taking fire, when it learns the facts."

"Facts only deaden some people," said he.

"Yes; that is what crushes us here. We have such mountains of facts to deal with."

"And you want fire to come down from those mountains and consume me?"

She nodded prophetically.

"I know you wouldn't run away."

"I am trying to feel the call," said Max a little skeptically. And in truth he was of divided mind, not because he had any doubt of his ability, but because the temptation to insincerity was so strong. This would give him the very opportunity he sought—through a vale of misery he beheld the way to his own Promised Land; but was it fair that he should take advantage of it without a heart of pity and conviction? This Prince of ours rather prided himself on his conscientious scruples.

"Will you tell me from the beginning," he said at last, "what put this thought into your mind? I seem to be getting it only by fragments."

"Three days ago," she answered, "I heard my father talking with others of the projected Commission. They were dissatisfied at the Church not being sufficiently represented—so insufficiently, indeed, that they took it as an intentional slight, part of the Government's policy for depriving the Bishops of all standing. It was held that further representation was imperative."

"What?" exclaimed Max; "am I to represent the Bishops, then?"

She shook her head, laughing. "Oh, no!" she answered. "They found some one very much better for themselves. That is the really immediate danger. They are afraid that the Commission as it stands will issue findings of a one-sided and party character, and that any minority report, unless it obtained the chairman's signature, would have no weight. Their main hope, therefore, is to secure a chairman of high standing on whose help they can rely, and it is thought that the Government could not oppose the nomination of a member of the Royal Family. It would appeal to popular sentiment; and subject to his Majesty's assent, his Royal Highness the Duke of Nostrum has expressed his willingness to serve."

Max had no great opinion of the collaterals of his grandfather—this one least of all. "Oh, ye Heavens!" he exclaimed. "For what use these bones of my ancestors? Why, with him to direct its deliberations, the Commission will run on into the next century, and its report be only applicable to the last!" Then, as he took stock of the situation, "And are you expecting me to head the minority report instead of him?" he inquired.

"It is not their report I am concerned about," she answered, "and for party I care little; it is the majority I fear. On paper the Commission looks as if it meant business; Church and property have been squeezed into one small corner, but the trade-interest is very strong; it is there in concealed ways which outsiders cannot recognize, for even over our public and medical departments—and still more in the press—it has now got control. I can give you instance after instance of men known as philanthropists whose riches come from sweated labor, and whose munificent charities form not one tithe of their inhuman profits drained from the lives of the very poorest. Some of them, great advertisers, are to sit on this Commission, and all the press, irrespective of party, will praise their appointment; while to defend their interests others will be attacked. The Government may be quite ready as a temporary expedient to make scapegoats of the property-owners, but it is not so ready to antagonize trade. I believe, sir, that on this Commission the real source of evil will never be traced; we shall hear of the grinding middleman and the rack-renter, but nothing dangerous to these magnates, or to the trade-system itself—unless——" She paused, and left silence to carry her message.

"Unless," supplemented Max, "some one thoroughly indiscreet occupies the chair?"

"Somebody," she replied, "whose minority report of one would attract all the attention it deserved."

"Oh, you think——?" His mind sparkled at the prospect: to be in a minority of one had a peculiar fascination for him.

"Yes, I think it may come to that," she said, "if you will honestly open your eyes."

"Then you cannot promise me the support of the Church?"

She shook her head as though that were the last thing possible.

"I am to be all alone?" His tone invited commiseration, while his brain soared with the dreams of a hashish-eater.

"I think about three may be with you, not more," she said, letting him down to earth again.

"Why are you so confident about me?"

Her gentle gray eyes met his with friendly understanding.

"When I found out who you were," she said, "I saw"—then she hesitated—"I saw that you had the rare gift of doing naturally what one would never expect."

"In what way?"

"To begin with, in coming here at all. And then you did things which, I imagine, no prince ever did before, and did them quite easily—'for fun,' I suppose you would say. Well, if you could do all that for fun, what might you not do when you became serious? A man who doesn't mind being laughed at—whatever his position—is very rare."

"Ah!" cried Max, "but now you are giving me more credit than I deserve. You set me to do ridiculous things for you—ridiculous, I mean, in one dressed as I was for fashion and not for use—I was aware of it; but nobody was aware of me. When I come here into these poor streets, I am so unexpected that nobody recognizes me. If they thought that they did, they would not believe their eyes. In that alone there is a sense of enlargement and liberty which those who have not to live in our position can hardly realize. It was like holiday; I felt as though I had been let loose."

"And so became more yourself?"

"I cannot say; but I was happy while I was here. Why did you send me away?"

"For the same reason that I now ask you to come back. I wanted you to be of use—independently."

"Yet here I am dependent upon you again."

"No; you have this in your own hands: it is your position."

"That secures the chairmanship? But am I at all likely to be accepted?"

"From what I hear, nobody suspects you of taking any great interest in the life of the poor. They have therefore no reason to be afraid of you."

"I see," said Max. "As a figure-head chairman I might even be valuable."

"Very, I have no doubt."

"Part of the game?"

"Royalty and Trade are supposed to be natural allies," remarked Sister Jenifer.

Max was startled at her discernment. "Oh, but that is true!" he cried. "How wonderful, then, that you should be able to trust me at all."

This set her smiling. "I had the advantage to begin with of not knowing who you were."

"And that gave you a start."

"No, finding you out gave me the start."

"You certainly have not lost time."

"That I cannot say, till I have your answer." There was no temporizing here.

Max thought for a while, then drew breath and spoke. "I want you quite to understand," he said, "that if I take up this work it will be very largely for a personal reason. I daresay I shall, as you say, 'take fire' when I know more about it; but at present I am not so moved. Commissions do not attract me; and what I undertake I shall do solely on faith—faith in you. Are you content that it should be so?"

"For a beginning, yes."

"Very well; something else follows. I shall need you for my guide."

"I am always here at certain hours," she said. "But there are others who know far more than I."

He let that point go unregarded.

"Then I may come to you for help?"

"Always, if really you need it."

"My needs shall be as real as I can make them," said Max. "How am I to begin?"

She named one or two books. "If you follow up what you read there," she said, "you will find most of it practically demonstrated in this district alone. For instance, we have a strike on just now among our tailors and shirt-makers; the men have made the women come out with them; they did not want to—women can exist under conditions where men cannot. Go and mix with them, be among them for hours, attend their street-corner meetings; you will hardly hear two ideas of any practical value, but you will get many. It isn't theory that is wanted,—it is that the life which thousands are living should be known and realized. When the eye has seen, the heart follows. All we really want is brotherhood; but how are we to bring it about?"

"From that I am furthest away of all," said Prince Max.

"No, no," she cried; "that is the great mistake! If kings are not the very symbol of our community then they have no value left. May I tell you two of the most kingly things I ever heard done in the present day? The one was by the old King of Montenegro, the smallest of the Balkan States. He found that his chief gentry were becoming lazy, too proud to put their hands to labor—making idleness a class distinction. He sat down in the courtyard of his palace and began to make shoes, and went on making them daily while he held his Court and administered justice; and so the new folly died."

"And the other?" inquired the Prince.

"It may seem far-fetched in the present connection," said she, "yet as an expression of the real kingly instinct it has all that I mean. Some years ago the heir to the English throne—the one who died young—went out to India. One day he was holding a durbar of Indian chiefs, and they with their retinues stood drawn up in parade ready to offer homage as he passed along their ranks. Opposite was a great crowd of natives watching the spectacle, and at a certain point in that crowd stood, as a mere onlooker, one whom Britain had defeated and driven into exile, the old Ameer of Afghanistan. Just before he rode down the Prince heard of it, and had the man pointed out to him; and when he came there he wheeled his horse about and gave the full royal salute. And through all that great multitude went a thrill because the kingly thing had been done, and all had seen it."

Tears glistened in her eyes as she spoke. "He was rather a dull young man," she went on, "so one has been told, but that was better than brains, for that was the touch of human kindness done in the grand manner which royalty makes possible, and ought to make natural—done with a pride which has its place beside the humility of St. Francis."

"Well, well," said Max, "put me in touch then, and I will see what I can do. But I haven't the grand manner, you know."

II

The King was considering the request of his revered uncle, the Duke of Nostrum, to preside over the Commission on slums, when Max came, asking also to be made useful.

"What, you too?" cried his Majesty; "isn't one of us enough?"

"Quite," said Max. "I want to be that one."

"What are your qualifications?"

"Willingness," said Max, "a brain capable of taking fire at facts, a great position, and an open and rebellious mind. I am quoting from authority; I was given my certificate yesterday."

To his Majesty this was merely the voice of Max at his flightiest. "Well," he said, "your Uncle Nostrum happens to have come first."

"Do you always grant first applications?"

"He has had much more experience."

"Of slums?" inquired Max.

"Of commissions, and all that sort of thing. He has sat on them."

"So he has—the elephant! And they have died the death."

"He works," said the King, "and you don't! You only talk."

"I only talk!" cried the injured Max; his voice went up to Heaven appealing against parental injustice. "Has he ever in his life been down into the slums and spent whole days there, as I have? Has he carried buckets for washing-sisters of charity, as I have; and borne upon his back the beds of the dying, as I have?"

"You?" cried the King with incredulity.

"I do not publish these things upon the housetops," said Max, "but in the secrecy of your chamber and in strict confidence I tell you that they are true. And while I, for many anxious weeks, have been toiling to qualify for this post, he, this Nostrum, this patent-drug from our royal medicine-chest, this soporific sedative——"

"Max, Max!" reproved his father.

"He rushes in where an angel has feared to tread, and filches from me my reward!"

"My dear boy, are you serious?" cried the King.

"I was never more serious in my life, father," replied his son. "But in order to arrest your attention I have to be theatrical. Now if you will really believe what I am going to say I will drop play-acting. I have, as I tell you, been down into our slum districts, I have been among the slum workers, means have been offered me for studying these problems at first hand, and I am prepared,—from this week on when Parliament rises, and the metropolis empties itself of pleasure, and you have gone sadly to your annual cure at Bad-as-Bad,—I am prepared to devote the whole of my time and energy to qualifying for this post; and with Heaven helping me, I will make it the most astonishing and effective Royal Commission that ever sat down believing itself on cushions to find that it was on a hornets' nest."

"You are becoming theatrical again," said the King.

"No, no," said Max, "but my brain is taking fire; an angel warned me of it in a dream, and behold it has come true. I have been seeing things."

"Your Uncle Nostrum won't be pleased," remarked the King.

"He never is," said Max. "Discontent is his prevailing virtue. Give himself something to be discontented about, then he can go down to his house justified."

"The Prime Minister has already recommended him," went on the King, "at least, said he would not oppose; but I don't know what he'll say to this."

"Nor do I," said Max, "and I don't care; neither do you."

The King opened his eyes as though he had been surprised in some secret—how did Max know that? And then his mind traveled a few months further on; yes, it was quite true, he did not now care in the least. What he had made up his mind to do had released him from all ministerial terrors; and as he contemplated the relief in his own case his thoughts turned to that bright youth over whose head so unlooked-for a fate was now impending; how dramatic it would be! And here was Max, all unbeknownst, harnessing himself to the wheels of State, pledged, unable to run away. It was just one more turn in the toils which a simple-minded man of gentle and retiring character was able to wind around the scheming lives of others. By at last daring to be himself he had become a power.

"Very well. I will see that it is arranged," he said. "Yes, it is perhaps time you had some experience in presiding over—over boards and all that sort of thing. I shan't last for ever; I don't feel like it." And he shook his head sadly, for he liked to be sorry for himself; nothing helped him more to bear up under the troubles of life.

"My dear father," said Max, with some fondness of tone, "you know that the prospect of going for your cure always depresses you; but as you insist on doing it you must pay the penalty. And when you are taking those waters which so upset your digestion, and deprive you of the flesh which nature meant you to wear, then think of me—not talking any longer, but really up and doing—preparing myself at last to follow in your footsteps. Now in this land of Jingalo, in the very heart of its social and commercial system, I am going to make history."

"Oh, you think so?" said the King to himself. "Young man, before you have much more than begun, you may have to come out of it! You can't do that sort of thing when you are in my shoes."

And then he bade Max a benevolent good-bye and went off to his cure; and Max, assured of his seat upon the forthcoming Commission, went off to his.

"How am I to dress for this business?" Max had inquired; it was one of the first practical problems to be solved, and an important one.

"If you don't mind," said Sister Jenifer, "you had better dress like a Socialist. Wear a very soft hat, a very low collar, and a very red or green tie, done loose in the French fashion, and nobody will wonder at your looking clean, or at your asking questions. Young Socialists come here to study the social problem and to show themselves off, and in a vague sort of way the people have begun to understand them; and though they look upon them as cranks, they don't any longer think they are inspectors or charity agents—the two things you must avoid."

"Dress," said Max, "has a very subtle effect upon the character. At a fancy-dress ball, last season, I wore a Cardinal's robe—there is a portrait of one in the British National Gallery rather like me—and it took me a month to get rid of the effects. If I turn into a Socialist, therefore, it will be upon your advice."

"As far as politics go it matters very little what you turn into," said Sister Jenifer.

"What a statement!" exclaimed Max.

"It is perfectly true," she said. "At present what we are fighting is ignorance and indifference; in comparison to that the mere theory of government doesn't matter, for nothing is going to succeed while one half of society neither knows nor cares how the other half lives. Your politicians are welcome to any theories they can find tenable, if only they will face facts."

"What are your own politics?"

"I haven't any; I haven't room for them. My only aim is just to get that one half of the community to come and look with understanding at the other half; and then service, I know, would follow. It won't until they do."

"Well, you are making me look," said Max.

"Yet I have not been able to make my father."

"Has he never been here?"

"He has opened churches."

"Well, you believe in prayer."

"That depends on how you define it."

"I wanted to ask you that. You are only a lay-sister; but some of you have taken vows—for a period, at all events."

"That is all the Church allows; but it makes little difference since they can always renew."

"Those who have taken vows—do they give themselves entirely up to prayer?"

"No, but they entirely depend upon it."

"Depend—how?"

"They could not do their work without it. You asked me for definition: I can only give you example. Some of our sisters quite literally cannot face what they have to do except after prayer; otherwise their flesh would revolt."

"Is it such horrible work?"

"They will not tell you so; but I know that it must be. You see I am rather an outsider. My father only allowed me to come here on certain conditions; and with the inner side of our work here I have nothing to do; I understand nothing about it."

Her face flushed slightly under his gaze, the faint, troubled flush of maidenhood which apprehends an evil of which it may not know the conditions; and he saw by swift intuition that this sincere spirit was ashamed of its own ignorance. His mind darted a guess that he had before him, in fact, an inexperience of life underlying intimate acquaintance with grief and poverty which he would not have believed to be possible. And oh, sexually, how it redoubled her beauty and charm! Yes, he could not deny that so unnatural a combination attracted him, and yet it enraged him also. A few moments ago he had heard from this woman's lips a declaration that no help could come till half and half made up one whole in knowledge and understanding; and yet there she stood—if his guess was right—hesitant and bashful on the borders of that great central problem about which parental authority had decreed she was to know nothing; an example set before him of that idealistic waste of womanhood which is for ever going on, and which for bad practical reasons society is always encouraging. For depend upon it the practical social result is what we men are really afraid of—not lest our women should lose either modesty or charm, but lest with knowledge they should apply themselves too ruthlessly to practical ends, and set upon their charm a price which hitherto we have avoided having to pay. And as he so moralized upon the relations of sex, a sentimental desire grew in him to kneel down there and then at her feet and tell her how good a young man from his point of view he had always been—and how bad a one from hers.

For the time being he resisted that temptation; other things that he was not yet sure of must come first; for before we can allow the beloved to think ill of us at all she must first think far better of us than we deserve. Then for the letting-down process there is a safe margin left, and confession becomes a luxury with no danger involved; since to see himself retrospectively pardoned by a heart virginally pure has surely restored to many a weary and disillusioned sensualist a better opinion of himself than he could ever have hoped to refurbish by his own efforts. That, oh ye men about town, is a good woman's mission in life; that is what she is for—when the watch has run down she winds it up again and sets it domestically ticking. And that she may continue to do so, let us keep her from all knowledge independently acquired. When we ourselves bring her the evidence, having first packed her fond jury of a heart, then we can also dictate verdict and sentence, and the world will run on in the grooves to which we have accustomed it.

All of which is a digression, and not in the least intended as being applicable to Max, unless, indeed, some reader of virulent morals so chooses to apply it; for far be it from this historian to prevent any reader forming his or her own judgment on the facts set forth. And if to any of these Max appears as one whose springs have run riotously down and now need setting up again—if his seems to be a heart that has never yet ticked domestically, because it had not been legally registered, I can at least promise them this—that before they come to the end of this history they will have an eminent ecclesiastical authority agreeing with them, and expressing their sentiments with an eloquence which I cannot hope to rival. And so having done with digression, let us return to the social education of Max, now trying to become acquainted with the lowest stratum of all.

IV

After a few weeks he began to distinguish in the squalor of the faces that surrounded him the separate causes of their malady—to know drink from disease, dissipation from destitution, the drug-habit from hunger. Complexion and facial expression stood more than dress as an indication of trade, habit, and environment; from physiognomy he began to learn history, and from Monday's streets a commentary on the linked sweetness long drawn out of Jewish followed by Christian sabbath. He became inured to smells, to the breathing of foul atmosphere, to contact with foul bodies, to a nakedness of speech such as he had not dreamed of, to a class-hatred that struck from eye to eye like murder, to an apathy of dead hopelessness that revolted him yet more. From Sister Jenifer he learned the hardest lesson of all, that to understand social conditions he must refrain from gifts of charity. And so, afraid of his own frailty, he came to his district with empty pockets, and going hungry himself spent hours among sale-dens, pawn-shops, the alleys where half-starved middle-men received the piece-work of sweated labor, and the black staircases where rent-collectors, hard-driven by competing agencies, plied a desperate piece-work of their own.

In every place he visited cleanliness was discouraged, and the water system seemed a mere after-thought. In most cases the taps were buttons requiring continuous pressure, and then yielding only an exiguous supply; a kettle took nearly a minute to fill, so that while one tenant drew service others stood waiting. He spoke indignantly of it to Sister Jenifer. What were the sanitary authorities doing? he asked.

"Oh, yes," she said, "those buttons are a new device; the old taps were taken away—they became too dangerous; these poor people found a way of turning them to effect."

"You mean they stole the fixings?"

"No; though they used to do that now and then. But this was at the last strike which happened to come during a drought. One of their leaders said to them: 'Take all the water you can; drain the city dry, make the rich give up their baths,—then perhaps they will attend to you.' They actually had the power; they organized the whole of the working district, and one night they turned on all the taps, the street fountains as well. And we, because at last they were taking their full share, were threatened with a water famine! Yes, if they had those tenement baths which the last Housing Commission recommended they could run us dry as their leader proposed,—hold the whole city up to ransom and dictate terms. As it was even those taps proved dangerous, so we gave them buttons instead; and of course the death-rate has gone up."

"And now the next strike has come."

"Ah, yes, but this is not such a large one and so, as it isn't reckoned 'dangerous,' the Government doesn't interfere, and no one outside troubles about the rights of it."

They were moving on the outskirts of a crowd in the center of which a demonstration of strikers was going on. Gaunt, hungry, apathetic faces formed the bulk of them; in their midst a man with a big voice talked heroically of the rights of labor and prophesied victory. They stood to listen for a while, then moved on. At the corner of a side-street which they crossed stood a smaller group; a woman, her hat tied round with a motor-veil, stood waving her arms from an orange-box.

"Who are those?" inquired Max.

"Women Chartists," said Sister Jenifer.

"What are they doing here?"

"They go wherever they can get a hearing."

Max stopped to listen a little satirically; he had never heard a woman speaking in public before. Presently he turned to his guide and found that her eye was on him. "Shall we go on?" he said.

"This does not interest you, then?"

"It is a subject about which I know nothing."

"But you came to learn."

"Well,—is that woman telling the truth?"

"No, not exactly."

"Does she know what she is talking about?"

"Not as well as she ought to."

"Then, isn't that sufficient?"

"You have listened to men here whose statements were just as wide of the mark, and whose proposals were just as useless."

"Yes, so you warned me; but what I find instructive is not the speaker but the crowd."

"You have a crowd here."

"A much smaller one."

"So you are for the majorities?"

Max acknowledged the stroke. "Very well," he said; "let us go back."

"No, I only wanted you to notice the crowd. Did they seem interested?"

"They listened."

"That is something, is it not, when she was talking of things that to their minds hardly concerned them?"

"But you say she was not telling the truth."

"She was ignorant, and she exaggerated; but for all they know what she is saying might be gospel."

"Is that how you would have it preached?"

"If gospels had to wait for the wise and prudent," said Jenifer, "they would wait till eternity. That woman was speaking not for an institution but for a movement."

"Do not such exaggerations condemn it?"

"By no means; if some did not exaggerate none of us would get a hearing—especially if we happened to be in a minority; and reformers always are."

"Though I embroider it for myself," said Prince Max, "from others I prefer to get plain truth."

"Plain truth," she replied, "is only that manner of dealing with a thing—with some wrong, say—which makes it plain to people that the wrong exists. Short of that you haven't got truth into them."

"Now you are preaching pragmatism," said Max.

"Do you suppose," she went on, "that to that dull, sunk, slow-witted crowd we have been looking at, a mere niggardly statement of facts would make the truth plain, or stir them to any action or feeling for others? That woman on some points over-stated her case quite ridiculously—especially as to the benefits and rewards which the women's Charter would bring—but the effect upon her hearers fell far short of what the real facts justify. Oh, people have to be bribed even to do no more than open their ears to the truth."

"By false promises of reward? Yes, you have the Church with you there. It deals with our ordinary everyday morality, in very much the same way. Tells a maximum of untruth so that a necessary minimum may spring out of it. How many Christians to-day really believe in the doctrine of hell?"

"Surely," she said, "to see the light of its fires in so many faces is proof enough."

"That is not the doctrine," said the Prince, "and you know it. Hell here and now may be very real; but it is not what your Church preaches. Many of those lit-up faces that you speak of are aglow with mere lustful enjoyment. But the Church does not teach that men can make the mistake when in hell of actually believing themselves in Heaven; that would be too dangerous. Turn on that tap, and the jasper sea in which your angels take their baths will run dry."

She looked at him half quizzically. "And what is your doctrine?" she inquired. "When you are enjoying yourself—saying things like that, for instance, hoping to hurt—do you ever think that you are in hell?"

"No," said Max, "I do not make enjoyment the test. Just now, for instance, I rather feel that I may be at the gates of Heaven; but I am not, therefore, superlatively happy. Can you promise me that the heavenly road is one of pure happiness?"

"To any one who accepted absolutely the Divine Will it must be."

"The Divine Will," said Max, "gave me my body and my reasoning power. You must not ask me to forfeit them. I agree with that old collegiate (a doctor of divinity like myself) to whom one of more austere piety had declared 'abject submission' the only possible attitude of the creature toward his Creator. 'No, no!' protested the Doctor, with outraged dignity, 'deference, but not—not abject submission!' Deference is all a man can honestly promise so long as reason remains to him; abject submission is fit only for lunatic asylums."

"And yet," she retorted, "abject submission to antecedents is all that science can infer when once it starts to investigate the springs of action."

"That is not to deny reason; that only conditions it. I wanted you to accuse me of blasphemy; but as you do not give me my legitimate openings I have to make them for myself. To me the abrogation of reason, on any pretense, is the most rooted blasphemy of which the mind of man is capable. Some modern Romanist penned once a hymn which had in it these or like words for its refrain—

That, to my mind, is a blasphemous utterance, for it juggles with the fundamentals of all morality. The person who adopts that attitude as an act of surrender to earthly love is a sensualist. It is a form of sensualism rampant in women; and men encourage it by bestowing upon it the names of womanly virtues. To adopt a similar attitude in spiritual matters seems to me sensualism none the less. And what a hot-bed for that sort of sensualism the Church has always been and still is!"

His ugly talk roused her spirit of resistance.

"How can it be sensual," she protested, "when it results in self-denial and self-sacrifice?"

"Self-sacrifice," he replied, "may be merely sensualism in its intensest form; it is peculiarly a woman's temptation; the scientific name for it (since you throw science at my head) is 'negative egoism.' You yourself are quite capable of it; for you cannot get rid of the results of your training all in a day."

She did not flinch from his attack.

"What do you know of my training?" she asked.

"I know this: here are you the superior of any Bishop on the bench now preparing to play injured martyr at the loss of his political privileges; and what position of authority and influence has your Church to offer you—you and the thousands like you whose practical humanity alone has made its antiquated forms still possible? Yes, you are its life-preservers, and they tuck you away into subordinate positions and back slums where nobody hears of you. And you have been trained to think that it is right!"

"The training was all my own," she said. "I tucked myself."

"Wastefully, under parental conditions—you yourself have owned it."

"There is always more work than one can do."

"There is much more work that you could do; but here, what is your chance? Has it not struck you—if you had only the position given you, what a power you might be, in that direction, I mean, of bringing the two halves of society face to face, which you say is your main object? If that position were offered you would you accept it as a thing sent to you from God, or would you——?"

And then Max stopped abruptly, for he realized that in another moment he would have been offering her the succession to the throne, and he felt that the street was not exactly the right place for it. Not that he minded making the offer anywhere; but she, self-sacrificingly, might refuse; and a crowded street was not the place where he could tackle a refusal of the throne to advantage. It was not like an ordinary proposal; there were too many points to urge and objections to be met; while a certain amount of preliminary incredulity was almost inevitable. She might know that he loved her still; but it would take a considerable amount of knowing that he also wished her to sit with him upon the throne; nay, for that matter, to sit with him off it, if Court etiquette and the fates so ordained. And if they did so ordain, where would that great position be which he was proposing to offer?

And so as Max has ended his declaration abruptly let us also end the chapter abruptly, and wonder what the next, or the next but one may have to bring forth.