During this little address the Princess, who made no rejoinder to that part of it which concerned herself, remained hidden behind her fan; but after Madame Grandoni had wandered away she lowered this emblazoned shield and rested her eyes for a while on Hyacinth. At last she said, “Don’t sit half a mile off. Come nearer to me. I want to say something to you that I can’t shout across the room.” Hyacinth instantly got up, but at the same moment she also rose; so that, approaching each other, they met half-way, before the great marble chimney-piece. She stood a little, opening and closing her fan; then she remarked, “You must be surprised at my not having yet spoken to you about our great interest.” “No, indeed, I am not surprised at anything.” “When you take that tone I feel as if we should never, after all, become friends,” said the Princess. “I hoped we were, already. Certainly, after the kindness you have shown me, there is no service of friendship that you might ask of me—” “That you wouldn’t gladly perform? I know what you are going to say, and have no doubt you speak truly. But what good would your service do me if, all the while, you think of me as a hollow-headed, hollow-hearted trifler, behaving in the worst possible taste and oppressing you with her attentions? Perhaps you can think of me as—what shall I call it?—as a kind of coquette.” Hyacinth demurred. “That would be very conceited.” “Surely, you have the right to be as conceited as you please, after the advances I have made you! Pray, who has a better one? But you persist in remaining humble, and that is very provoking.” “It is not I that am provoking; it is life, and society, and all the difficulties that surround us.” “I am precisely of that opinion—that they are exasperating; that when I appeal to you, frankly, candidly, disinterestedly—simply because I like you, for no other reason in the world—to help me to disregard and surmount these obstructions, to treat them with the contempt they deserve, you drop your eyes, you even blush a little, and make yourself small, and try to edge out of the situation by pleading general devotion and insignificance. Please remember this: you cease to be insignificant from the moment I have anything to do with you. My dear fellow,” the Princess went on, in her free, audacious, fraternising way, to which her beauty and simplicity gave nobleness, “there are people who would be very glad to enjoy, in your place, that form of obscurity.” “What do you wish me to do?” Hyacinth asked, as quietly as he could.