"Princess, we both love you," began the Captain, blushing like a hobbledehoy, and rushing _in medias res_. I allowed them to call me Princess, because it was not my Christian name. "Is this the time--when I am busy feeling the pulse of the Bazaar?" "You gave us five minutes," pleaded the Captain, determined to do or die, now he was in the thick of it. "Go on," I said, "I will forgive you everything--even your love of me--if you are only brief." "We both love you. We are great friends. We have no secrets. We told each other. We are doubtful if you love either--or which. We have come together." He fired off the short, sharp sentences as from a six-barrelled revolver. "Captain Athelstan--Lord Arthur," I said. "I am deeply touched by the honor you have done your friendship and me. I will be equally frank--and brief--with you. I cannot choose either of you, because I love you both. Like every girl, I formed an ideal of a lover. I have been fortunate in finding my ideal in the flesh. I have been unfortunate in finding it in two pieces. Fate has bisected it, and given the form to one and the voice to the other. My ideal looks like you, Captain Athelstan, and sings like you, Lord Arthur. It is a stupid position, I know, and I feel like the donkey between two bundles of hay. But under the circumstances I have no choice." They looked at each other half-rapturously, half-despairingly. "Then what's to be done?" cried the Captain. "I don't know," I said, hopelessly. "Love seems not only blind, but a blind alley, this time." "D-do you m-m-ean," asked Lord Arthur, "'how happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away?'" I was glad he sang it, because it precipitated matters. "That is the precise position," I admitted. "Oh, then, Arthur, my boy, I congratulate you," said the Captain, huskily. "N-n-no, I'll g-g-go away," said the singer. They wrangled for full ten minutes, but the position remained a block. [Illustration: _Bazaar proposal of Marriage._] "Gentlemen," I interposed, "if either of you had consented to accept the other's sacrifice, the problem would have been solved; only I should have taken the other. But two self-sacrifices are as bad as none." "Then let us toss up for you, Princess," said the Captain, impulsively. "Oh, no!" I cried, with a shudder. "Submit my life to the chances of head or tail! It would make me feel like a murderess, with you for gentlemen of the jury." A painful silence fell upon the sanctum. Unwitting of the tragedy playing within, all the fun of the fair went on without. "Listen," I said, at last. "I will be the wife of him who wins me. Chance shall not decide, but prowess. Like the princesses of old, I will set you a task. Whoever accomplishes it shall win my hand." "Agreed," they said eagerly, though not simultaneously. "Ay, but what shall it be?" I murmured. "Why not a competition?" suggested the Captain.