“But you _must_ sleep!” cried the young Princess. “Oh, dear, and so you are miserable, too! Ah, the misery of vain desire, and oh, the misery of delight cut short! But you certainly must get some sleep to-night. You can’t be allowed to go about kissing women’s hands as prettily as you do and getting no sleep for your pains. Now wait here a few moments while I go and get you some aspirin.” But the youth dissuaded her, asking her how she could have the heart to put an aspirin between them when he had dared all the legal penalties for trespass for the sake of speech with her, nay, even for sight of her. “Well, I think you are very bold,” sighed she, but he humbly protested that never was a man less bold than he by ordinary, but that the fires of chivalry had burned high in him at sight of her hand at the window, for, said he, could any but an unhappy heart sit with a hand drooping out of a window on the only sunny afternoon of an English summer? “There is certainly something in that,” said the young Princess, and then she told him how miserable she was and how miserable she must always be, for her heart was engaged in a battle with superior odds. And she made him sit beside her on the bench of cedarwood, telling him of her father and mother and the gay Court of Valeria, “which is so gay,” she said, “that some of the most respectable ladies of the Court are goaded into getting themselves divorced just for the sake of the peace and quiet of being _déclassée_.” And she told how it was to this Court that one fine day there came an English lord with the very best introductions and such very excellent white waist-coats for evening wear as were the envy of every cavalier in Valeria. “Like this one of mine?” asked the young gentleman, for is he a proper man who will not belittle another by claiming an equal degree of eminence in the sartorial abyss? “That is not the point,” said the Princess Baba, “but the point is that my Lord Quorn, for such was my lover’s name, was the handsomest man I ever saw, and I loved him and he loved me and I lost him and he lost me. That may seem a very reasonable combination of events to you, who are young and cynical, but to me it was a matter of the utmost wretchedness. My friend, know that this English lord had to fly for his life, for a jealous lady of the Court had gone to my parents saying he had seduced me.” “The liar!” cried our hero. “Oh, it was quite true!” sighed the Princess Baba. “The cad!” cried our hero. “I can’t agree with you,” said the Princess Baba. “I adore him. I adore him. I adore him. And, oh, I am so very unhappy!” He rose and knelt and said: “Princess, mayn’t I be of some use? Can’t I help you? Please command me, for I would die for you.” “At this very moment,” she sobbed, “he is very probably either dead or dying, for how can he hope to survive a duel with the best swordsman of Valeria, Captain Count Rupprecht Saxemünden von Maxe-Middengräfen?”