“And if you didn’t have it what would you do? Should you starve?” “Oh, I don’t think I should starve,” our friend replied judicially. She looked a little chagrined, but after a moment pursued: “I wonder whether you’d come to see me in the country somewhere.” “Oh cracky!” Hyacinth exclaimed, catching his breath. “You’re so kind I don’t know what to do.” “Don’t be _banal_, please. That’s what other people are. What’s the use of my looking for something fresh in other walks of life if you’re going to be _banal_ too? I ask if you’d come.” He couldn’t have said at this moment whether he were plunging or soaring. “Yes, I think I’d come. I don’t know at all how I should do it—there would be several obstacles; but wherever you should call for me I’d come.” “You mean you can’t leave your work like that? You might lose it if you did, and then be in want of money and much embarrassed?” “Yes, there would be little difficulties of that kind. You see that immediately, in practice, great obstacles and complications come up when it’s a question of a person like you making friends with a person like me.” “That’s the way I like you to talk,” said the Princess with a pitying gentleness that struck her visitor as quite sacred. “After all I don’t know where I shall be. I’ve got to pay stupid visits myself, visits where the only comfort will be that I shall make the people jump. Every one here thinks me exceedingly odd—as there’s no doubt I am! I might be ever so much more so if you’d only help me a little. Why shouldn’t I have my bookbinder after all? In attendance, you know—it would be awfully _chic_. We might have immense fun, don’t you think so? No doubt it will come. At any rate I shall return to London when I’ve got through that _corvée_; I shall be here next year. In the meantime don’t forget me,” she went on as she rose to her feet. “Remember on the contrary that I expect you to take me into the slums—into very bad places.” Why the idea of these scenes of misery should have lighted up her face is more than may be explained; but she smiled down at Hyacinth—who even as he stood up was of slightly smaller stature—with all her strange high radiance. Then in a manner almost equally quaint she added a reference to what she had said a moment before. “I recognise perfectly the obstacles in practice as you call them; but though I’m not by nature persevering, and am really very easily put off, I don’t consider they’ll prove insurmountable. They exist on my side as well, and if you’ll help me to overcome mine I’ll do the same for you with yours.”