“Simply because there’s no one in the world and has never been any one in the world like you.” “Oh thank you!” said the Princess impatiently. And she turned from him as with a beat of great white wings that raised her straight out of the bad air of the personal. It took her up too high, it put an end to their talk; expressing an indifference to what it might interest him to think of her to-day, and even a contempt for it, which brought tears to his eyes. His tears, however, were concealed by the fact that he bent his head low over the hand he had taken to kiss; after which he left the room without looking at her. XLVI “I’ve received a letter from your husband,” Paul Muniment said to her the next evening as soon as he came into the room. He announced this truth with an unadorned directness as well as with a freedom of manner that showed his visit to be one of a closely-connected series. The Princess was evidently not a little surprised and immediately asked how in the world the Prince could know his address. “Couldn’t it have been by your old lady?” Muniment returned. “He must have met her in Paris. It’s from Paris he writes.” “What an incorrigible cad!” she exclaimed. “I don’t see that—for writing to me. I’ve his letter in my pocket and I’ll show it to you if you like.” “Thank you, nothing would induce me to touch anything he has touched.” “You touch his money, my dear lady,” Muniment remarked with one of the easy sequences of a man who sees things as they are. The Princess considered. “Yes, I make an exception for that, because it hurts him, it makes him suffer.” “I should think on the contrary it would gratify him by showing you in a state of weakness and dependence.” “Not when he knows I don’t use it for myself. What exasperates him is that it’s devoted to ends which he hates almost as much as he hates me and yet which he can’t call selfish.” “He doesn’t hate you,” said Muniment with the same pleasant reasonableness—that of a man who has mastered not two or three but all the possible aspects of a question. “His letter satisfies me of that.” The Princess stared at this and asked what he was coming to—if he were leading up to the hint that she should go back and live with her husband. “I don’t know that I’d go so far as to advise it,” he replied; “when I’ve so much benefit from seeing you here on your present footing, that wouldn’t sound well. But I’ll just make bold to prophesy you’ll go before very long.” “And on what does that extraordinary prediction rest?” “On this plain fact—that you’ll have nothing to live upon. You decline to read the Prince’s letter, but if you were to look at it it would give you evidence of what I mean. He informs me that I need count on no more supplies from your hands, since you yourself will receive no more.” “He addresses you in those plain terms?”