end of their time and they never love they never love at all they never know great sorrows or great joys they might almost as well never have been bom but all are not like that and i although i am still young have lived both in joy and sorrow till i feel like an old old woman do you think he asked after a moment s silence that you will always feel the same i think so i don t believe when men and women have passed through great storm and stress that they can ever again become as placid as they were before when you once feel old i doubt if you ever grow to feel really young again but don t you think he said wistfully that it would be very dreadful to your husband if he could know that the strange story of my life your entire life was given up to a desolation of regret i have never thought of that i returned simply if he really and truly loved you he went on don t you think that he would rather you were happy even if you were not quite so happy as you had once been than that you should live out the rest of your life practically alone i could not imagine my husband wishing � wishing me i repeated with a certain feeling of outraged dignity to marry again he was so unselfish prince that if it would make me happier i know he would be the last if he could give an opinion to set himself in the way of my any measure of happiness i won t pretend that i do not know what you mean it would be foolish and while i am as i am with your mother it will tend to make us less good friends than we should otherwise be if we only make believe to understand each other in a half kind of way i thought the other day when you spoke on this subject that you understood me that you realized not that i felt i was tied by the wishes of my husband but that i myself had no wish to alter existing arrangements mrs he said � may i call you � i had no intention of speaking to you again because i feel that in a sense i have the of my hospitality forgive me it is only s presence here which has made me speak forgive me and believe that i am moved by a desire first and foremost for your happiness he rose from his chair as he spoke and so did i from mine he took my hand for a moment in his and raised it to his lips and as he turned away he trod upon one of the great hounds which was lingering very near to him i remember when he first came home that i had thought there might be something of the brute in him yet even in what i saw was a moment of deadly pain he stopped and time goes on patted the great dog on the head with a word of regret upon his lips i had never liked prince so much as i did at that moment i don t know that i had ever felt so sympathetic towards him so completely at home with him that i had ever before felt so little of his � i mean that i had never felt so nearly as if he were indeed an englishman i don t think that the princess ever suspected that matters had gone as far between us as they really had done for months after that little visit of colonel s we went on without very much change in our every day life it was to me that they did not wish to travel more to leave more often more than once the princess told me that for several years her son had not been at home for so many months at one spell louis is very much changed she said to me one day he used to be always longing to about to travel abroad to shoot big game to live a life of adventure and change but since he came home this time he seems to have altered he seems to content himself with such placid and domestic things in comparison with his past life perhaps he feels that he must stay more with you now i suggested now that i have not for a companion yes perhaps that is so no doubt that is it dear princess i said in a tone of acquiescence although in my heart i knew perfectly well that such was not the reason perhaps said she he has another and a different reason be that as it may it is delightful to me to have my son always with me even while i wonder that he does not grow tired of i wonder that you do not travel more i said perhaps rather you would like to travel more you would like to move about to go to paris � to well our year of seclusion is over now and there is no reason the strange story of my life why if you would like to have a change my dear that we should not take it oh no i did not say so i cried perhaps you did not say so but you are young and change is good for young people you have never been to you would like to see it oh yes if it would please you to go certainly it would please me i shall speak to louis about it the result of this conversation was that we very shortly left and took up our abode in their house in just at first i was half reluctant to undertake even so short a journey and yet when i found myself in the beautiful 