Another visit, you say? PRINCE For which I took the liberty to prepare him. MIZZIE Who is it? PRINCE Our son. MIZZIE Are you ... bringing your son here? PRINCE He'll be here in half an hour at the most. MIZZIE I say, Prince ... this is not a joke you're trying to spring on me? PRINCE By no means. On a departed ... what an idea! MIZZIE Is it really true? He's coming here? PRINCE Yes. MIZZIE Apparently you still think that nothing but a whim keeps me from having anything to do with the boy? PRINCE A whim...? No. Seeing how consistent you have been in this matter, it would hardly be safe for me to call it that. And when I bear in mind how you have had the strength all these years not even to ask any questions about him.... MIZZIE There has been nothing admirable about that. I have had the strength to do what was worse ... when I had to let him be taken away ... a week after he was born.... PRINCE Yes, what else could you--could we have done at the time? The arrangements made by me at the time, and approved by you in the end, represented absolutely the most expedient thing we could do under the circumstances. MIZZIE I have never questioned their expediency. PRINCE It was more than expedient, Mizzie. More than our own fate was at stake. Others might have come to grief if the truth had been revealed at the time. My wife, with her weak heart, had probably never survived. MIZZIE Oh, that weak heart.... PRINCE And your father, Mizzie.... Think of your father! MIZZIE You may be sure he would have accepted the inevitable. That was the very time when he began his affair with Lolo. Otherwise everything might not have come off so smoothly. Otherwise he might have been more concerned about me. I could never have stayed away several months if he hadn't found it very convenient at that particular moment. And there was only one danger connected with the whole story--that you might be shot dead by Fedor Wangenheim, my dear Prince. PRINCE Why I by him? It might have taken another turn. You are not a believer in judgment by ordeal, are you? And the outcome might have proved questionable from such a point of view even. You see, we poor mortals can never be sure how things of that kind are regarded up above. MIZZIE You would never talk like that in the Upper House--supposing you ever opened your mouth during one of its sessions. PRINCE Possibly not. But the fundamental thing remains, that no amount of honesty or daring could have availed in the least at the time. It would have been nothing but useless cruelty toward those nearest to us. It's doubtful whether a dispensation could have been obtained--and besides, the Princess would never have agreed to a divorce--which you know as well as I do. MIZZIE Just as if I had cared in the least for the ceremony...! PRINCE Oh.... MIZZIE