“You’re not a wicked revolutionary then? You’re not a conspirator nor an assassin? It surprises me, but so much the better. In this house one can never know. It’s not a good house, and if you’re a respectable person it’s a pity you should come here. Yes, she’s very gay and I’m very sad. I don’t know how it will end. After me, I hope. The world’s not good, certainly; but God alone can make it better.” And as the fiddler expressed the hope that he was not the cause of her leaving the room she went on: “_Doch, doch_, you’re the cause; but why not you as well as another? I’m always leaving it for some one or for something, and I’d sooner do so for an honest man, if you _are_ one—but, as I say, who can tell?—than for a destroyer. I wander about. I’ve no rest. I have, however, a very nice room, the best in the house. Me at least she doesn’t treat ill. It looks to-day like the end of all things. If you’d turn your climate the other side up the rest would do well enough. Good-night to you, whoever you are.” The old lady shuffled away in spite of Mr. Vetch’s renewed apologies, and the subject of her criticism stood before the fire watching the pair while he opened the door. “She goes away, she comes back; it doesn’t matter. She thinks it a bad house, but she knows it would be worse without her. I remember about you now,” the Princess added. “Mr. Robinson told me you had been a great democrat in old days, but that at present you’d ceased to care for the people.” “The people—the people? That’s a silly term. Whom do you mean?” She hesitated. “Those you used to care for, to plead for; those who are underneath every one, underneath everything, and have the whole social mass crushing them.” “I see you think I’m a renegade. The way certain classes arrogate to themselves the title of the people has never pleased me. Why are some human beings the people, the people only, and others not? I’m of the people myself, I’ve worked all my days like a knife-grinder and I’ve really never changed.” “You mustn’t let me make you angry,” she laughed as she sat down again. “I’m sometimes very provoking, but you must stop me off. You wouldn’t think it perhaps, but no one takes a snub better than I.” Mr. Vetch dropped his eyes a minute; he appeared to wish to show that he regarded such a speech as that as one of this great, perverse lady’s characteristic humours and knew he should be wanting in respect to her if he took it seriously or made a personal application of it. “What I want is this,” he began after a moment: “that you’ll, that you’ll——” But he stopped before he had got further. She was watching him, listening to him; she waited while he paused. It was a long pause and she said nothing. “Princess,” the old man broke out at last, “I’d give my own life many times for that boy’s!” “I always told him you must have been fond of him!” she cried with bright exultation. “Fond of him? Pray who can doubt it? I made him, I invented him!”