“Happily there appeared a sinister little dwarf. I don’t remember where he came from, but he was U. C. in the nick of time or heaven knows what _would_ have happened. ‘See here,’ said the dwarf, ‘she will be perfectly insufferable if you act in this way. Women are not what they used to be.’ ‘Oh, come now,’ said the prince, ‘I have heard that before.’ ‘I assure you,’ persisted the dwarf, ‘that what women get easily they don’t value at all. You will make her think there are no other fish in the sea. She will expect too much of you. You will never be able to live up to the situation. Moreover, she never will feel the delight of possession that comes after doubt and difficulty. She will sigh for something that can come only after the sweet agony of deferred hope.’ ‘Aren’t you getting rather deep?’ asked the prince. But the dwarf held to the point. ‘Whom Love loveth he perplexeth. First make her doubt,’ he said, ‘or she never will believe.’ Then the dwarf went to the heroine. ‘Your Highness,’ he began, then dropped his flourish, and stepping close to her, whispered: ‘You are making a great mistake. You never can hold the prince. You act like a shop girl who has won the floor walker. You have the engaged look in its most silly form. You threw yourself at him. You know you did. He knows you did. When you are securely married he will act accordingly. Your mother was frantic for him, and has done her best to help you make yourself ridiculous. Everybody is tittering over the way you dote on him. Don’t be a fool.’ Well, if either the prince or the princess had been marrying for policy this chatter would have done no harm. But they were marrying for love, and love has nerves. Love lacks that conservative leash that lies in an extraneous motive; and by an absurd chance the dwarf precipitated an actual quarrel, the prince got to flirting with a middle-aged duchess whom he despised, and the princess, in a jealous fit, gave a peevish, mischief-making dowager aunt the opportunity she long had been looking for, and the match was broken off.” “Well,” I asked patiently, “who was the dwarf?” “The spirit of romance, of course, the principle which insists that something shall happen every thousand words—Oh, an entertaining and well-meaning fellow, promising that everything shall come out all right in the end, whatever happens. But you can’t trust him. And if he does fling his hand at the end and assure you that everything is all right, _is_ everything all right? Do the scars count for nothing? Will the interest of joy on the investment of misery prove to be a fair compensation? Realism doesn’t promise so much. Realism doesn’t always insist on a wedding, but may it not say quite as truthfully sometimes that they lived happily ever after?” [Illustration]