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 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.” He immediately got up, but at the same moment she also rose; so that, approaching each other, they met half-way and before the great marble chimney-piece. She stood opening and closing her fan, then she began: “You must be surprised at my not having yet spoken to you about our great interest.” “No indeed: I’m not now 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’ve shown me there’s no service of friendship you might ask of me——!” “That you wouldn’t gladly perform? I know what you’re 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 clumsy attentions? Perhaps you believe me a bad, bold, ravening flirt.” “Capable of wanting to flirt with _me_?” Hyacinth demurred. “I should be very conceited.” “Surely you’ve the right to be as conceited as you please after the advances I’ve made you! Pray who has a better one? But you persist in remaining humble, and that’s very provoking.” “It’s not I who am provoking; it’s life and society and all the difficulties that surround us.” “I’m precisely of that opinion—that they’re 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 conventions and absurdities, 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’ve 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 then to do?” Hyacinth asked as quietly as he could.