“That’s a secret. Instead of answering your question, allow me to ask you another. Suppose you were again an earthly ruler with unlimited power, what would you do?” “I hardly know,” she confessed naively and added: “But I think my first move would be to curb the freedom of the press by pensioning off all the newspaper men, so that we celebrities might have our fanciful fads without being interviewed. Not that I object to the interview or to the interviewer. ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’—to most men.” “And fiction is more interesting than truth and much more believable—to most women,” I retorted. “You know Heine says that woman is at once apple and serpent. I have never dissented from that view, for apple sass and serpents’ tongues have always been the desserts woman serves up to man. Eve plucked the first fruit from the forbidden tree, but many another fair hand has since robbed the genealogical orchard. Thus do we ape our ancestors.” “Poor Eve!” sympathized the queen. “Her daughters have often taken a bite of the enticing apple, but unlike their mother, it does not open their eyes to man’s true nature.” “I have often wondered,” I went on, not heeding the amused smile of her Majesty, “why God didn’t make a dozen women instead of one out of Adam’s rib, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Eden would no longer have been Paradise to Eve if she had had a rival.” “Where is man’s boasted chivalry?” suddenly asked Elizabeth. “Sir Walter never struck a woman with the whip of sarcasm.” “With his cloak wrapped about her, she couldn’t feel the sting of satire,” I retorted. “Did you ever hear how I repaid Sir Walter for his gallantry? We had gone to London to attend the coronation of King Edward the Seventh. One of the streets we had to cross was so muddy that we paused in dismay. A newsboy brushed up against me. Taking the papers from under his arm I tossed them into the street.” “‘Tut! tut! keep on your coat, Sir Walter,’ I said. ‘Allow me to pilot you to yonder pavement dryshod.’” “‘Who says that chivalry is dead?’ quoth Sir Walter. “‘Am I not dead?’” I asked. “‘Good Queen Bess will never die,’ responded the baronet, with ready wit. Then he laughed as the newsboy picked up his papers from the muddy street, loudly bewailing the prank of the wind which had spoiled his stock in trade.” Elizabeth again did violence to my conceptions of royalty by laughing at her own wit; then she said: “Sir Scribe, it seems to me that you haven’t progressed well with your interview. You haven’t once indulged in those misfit personalities which bring your American papers so many libel suits. When I received your card I anticipated that I should be discussed by myself and dissected by you. I expected you would be concerned as to whether my ancestors belonged to that little company of gentlemen who jumped from tree to tree in Africa and was prepared to tell you, as I have told Darwin, that even a baboon can have a respectable daughter!”