"Well, then, you leave me no alternative," she argued, "but to conclude that Victor Field is a tremendous swell. Didn't you notice, I bobbed him a curtsey?" "I took the curtsey as a tribute to my Oriental magnificence," he confessed. "Field doesn't sound like an especially patrician name. I'd give anything to discover who you are. Can't you be induced to tell me? I'll bribe, entreat, threaten--I'll do anything you think might persuade you." "I'll tell you at once, if you'll own up that you're Victor Field," said she. "Oh, I'll own up that I'm Queen Elizabeth if you'll tell me who you are. The end justifies the means." "Then you _are_ Victor Field?" she pursued him eagerly. "If you don't mind suborning perjury, why should I mind committing it?" he reflected. "Yes. And now, who are you?" "No; I must have an unequivocal avowal," she stipulated. "Are you or are you not Victor Field?" "Let us put it at this," he proposed, "that I'm a good serviceable imitation; an excellent substitute when the genuine article is not procurable." "Of course, your real name isn't anything like Victor Field," she declared, pensively. "I never said it was. But I admire the way in which you give with one hand and take back with the other." "Your real name--" she began. "Wait a moment--Yes, now I have it. Your real name--It's rather long. You don't think it will bore you?" "Oh, if it's really my real name, I daresay I'm hardened to it," said he. "Your real name is Louis Charles Ferdinand Stanislas John Joseph Emmanuel Maria Anna." "Mercy upon me," he cried, "what a name! You ought to have broken it to me in instalments. And it's all Christian name at that. Can't you spare me just a little rag of a surname, for decency's sake?" he pleaded. "The surnames of royalties don't matter, Monseigneur," she said, with a flourish. "Royalties? What? Dear me, here's rapid promotion! I am royal now! And a moment ago I was a little penny-a-liner in London." "_L'un n'empeche pas l'autre._ Have you never heard the story of the Invisible Prince?" she asked. "I adore irrelevancy," said he. "I seem to have read something about an invisible prince, when I was young. A fairy tale, wasn't it?" "The irrelevancy is only apparent. The story I mean is a story of real life. Have you ever heard of the Duke of Zeln?" "Zeln? Zeln?" he repeated, reflectively. "No, I don't think so." She clapped her hands. "Really, you do it admirably. If I weren't perfectly sure of my facts, I believe I should be taken in. Zeln, as any history would tell you, as any old atlas would show you, was a little independent duchy in the center of Germany." "Poor dear thing! Like Jonah in the center of the whale," he murmured, sympathetically. "Hush. Don't interrupt. Zeln was a little independent German duchy, and the Duke of Zeln was its sovereign. After the war with France it was absorbed by Prussia. But the ducal family still rank as royal highness. Of course, you've heard of the Leczinskis?"