In what way? To what fate have you had to submit...? Everybody can't become a cabinet minister. Oh, I see ... that remark must refer to the fact that His Highness did me the honor ten years ago, after the blissful departure of his noble spouse, to apply for my hand. PRINCE And again seven years ago, if you'll be kind enough to remember. MIZZIE Oh, yes, I do remember. Nor have I ever given you any cause to question my good memory. PRINCE And I hope you have never ascribed my proposals to anything like a desire to expiate some kind of guilt. I asked you to become my wife simply because of my conviction that true happiness was to be found only by your side. MIZZIE True happiness!... Oh, what a mistake! PRINCE Yes, I do believe that it was a mistake at that moment. Ten years ago it was probably still too early. And so it was, perhaps, seven years ago. But not to-day. MIZZIE Yes, to-day too, my dear Prince. Your fate has been never to know me, never to understand me at all--no more when I loved you than when I hated you, and not even during the long time when I have been completely indifferent toward you. PRINCE I have always known you, Mizzie. I know more about you than you seem able to guess. Thus, for instance, I am not unfamiliar with the fact that you have spent the last seventeen years in more profitable pursuits than weeping over a man who, in all likelihood, was not worthy of you at the time in question. I am even aware that you have chosen to expose yourself to several disillusionments subsequent to the one suffered at my hands. MIZZIE Disillusionments, you say? Well, for your consolation, my dear Prince, I can assure you that some of them proved very enjoyable. PRINCE I know that, too. Otherwise I should hardly have dared to call myself familiar with the history of your life. MIZZIE And do you think that I am not familiar with yours? Do you want me to present you with a list of your mistresses? From the wife of the Bulgarian attache in 1887 down to Mademoiselle Therese Gredun--if that be her real name--who retained the honors of her office up to last Spring at least. It seems likely that I know more than you even, for I can give you a practically complete list of those with whom she has deceived you. PRINCE Oh, don't, if you please. There is no real pleasure in knowledge of that kind when you don't uncover it yourself. [_A carriage is heard stopping in front of the house._ PRINCE That's he. Do you want to disappear before he comes out here? I can detain him that long. MIZZIE Don't trouble yourself, please. I prefer to stay. But don't imagine that there is anything astir within me.... This is nothing but a young man coming to call on my father. There he is now.... As to blood being thicker than water--I think it's nothing but a fairy tale. I can't feel anything at all, my dear Prince.