"Almost everything but my business. You don't," he added after a second; and there was something so simple and imperial in his manner that she did not think him insolent; in fact, to tell the truth, she was flattered. "You might tell me something about yourself," he added. The princess was too human not to be delighted to obey this suggestion, and too well-bred to take an unfair advantage of it. She talked a long time about herself, and then about the Haines Heating Corporations. And then they talked about him. In fact they talked all the rest of the night--as continuously as schoolgirls, as honestly as old friends, as ecstatically as lovers; and yet, of course, they were not schoolgirls or old friends, and even less lovers. They were two middle-aged people, so real and so fastidious in their different ways that they had not found many people whom they liked; and they had suddenly and utterly unexpectedly found each other. They were interrupted by the entrance of a housemaid with a broom and a duster. She gave a smothered exclamation and withdrew. Haines looked at his watch. It was half past seven. He got up and pulled the curtains back. A pale clear pink-and-green winter morning was just beginning to shine upon the park, glittering in snow and ice. "At home," said Lisa, "I should consider what we have just done as rather irregular." "In this country," he answered, "you can do anything if you have sufficient integrity to do it." "How can I tell whether I have or not?" she asked. He smiled again. "I have enough for both," he answered. "Luckily or unluckily"--and he sighed as he repeated it--"luckily or unluckily." "Oh, luckily; luckily, of course," said Lisa, though there was just a trace of annoyance in her voice that this was so clear. She held out her hand. "Good-by," she said. He took her hand, and then from his great height he did something that no one had ever done to the princess before--he patted her on the head. "You're all right," he said, and sighed and turned away--as it were, dismissing her. She went upstairs to her own room--which seemed altered, as backgrounds do alter with changes in ourselves. It was no longer a room in Charlotte's house but in Haines'; and she was leaving it, leaving it in a few hours. She did not debate that at all. She was going with her son, but there was something that must be done before she went--something that she must do for this new friend of hers whom she would never, probably, see again. She did not have much time to think it over, for when her breakfast tray came in, as usual, at nine, Charlotte came with it--striking just the note the princess hoped she wouldn't strike--apology. "I suppose your son told you what happened last night. So silly. I'm so ashamed." "Ashamed?" said the princess, and she noted that her tone had something of the neutrality of Haines' own. She had copied him.