"I have been told that you have been keeping a mistress," he said, avoiding the young man's eye. "That," answered Max, "would, I suppose, be the generally received phrase for it." "Who is she?" queried the King, pushing hazardously on, now that the danger-point had been reached. "Do you wish to meet her?" Parental dignity was offended. "That is a suggestion you ought not to make." "Then, my dear father, why inquire after her? She and I suit each other: to you she is nothing." "How long has this been going on?" "We have lived together for five years." The King recalled a phrase that he had recently heard authoritatively spoken--"a relationship of long standing. Morally, of course, that only makes the matter worse." "H'm!" he said aloud. "You started early, I must say!" "You, sir, at that age were already a father," said Max correctively. The King made an interjectory movement, but the Prince went on. "I was twenty, and I was still virginal. To speak frankly, I was amazed at myself, perhaps even amused. Yes, even now I am inclined to think that, among princes, my record must have been exceptional. This lady, to whom I owe nearly the whole of my domestic experience, saved me from an adventuress----" The King lifted his eyebrows. "One," went on the Prince, "who would have wrung from me in a single year far more, from a merely monetary point of view, than the whole experience has yet cost me." The King was slightly bewildered. "This person," he said tentatively, "is not, then, of the adventuress class?" "Nor was that other: by class she was one of the highest of our aristocracy. I believe that when she is received at Court it is correct etiquette for you to kiss her upon the cheek. The lady who did actually befriend me was her companion and secretary, an Austrian by birth. She had divorced her husband and possessed only a small annuity on which she was unable to live independently in the style to which she had become accustomed. Yet for the first year of our liaison she would accept from me no provision, and we saw each other but seldom. Strange as it may seem she taught me the value and the charm of conjugal moderation and fidelity. Just now she is receiving a visit from her son, on leave from his military services abroad; and respecting the ordinary moral conventions, which happen also to be hers, I do not go to see her while the son's visit is being paid. Yet I apprehend that he cannot be in ignorance of the facts." "She has a grown-up son?" queried the King, still a little puzzled; and Max smiled.