"I am taking you too much away from your
friends, and spoiling your pleasure, perhaps, because I do not
dance. Is it not so? It is your kindness to a stranger, and they
do not all appreciate it."
"We will go into the winter garden and talk it over," she
answered, smiling.
They found their old seats unoccupied. Once more they sat and
listened to the fall of the water.
"Prince," said Penelope, "there is one thing I have learned about
you this evening, and that is that you do not love questions. And
yet there is one other which I should like to ask you."
"If you please," the Prince murmured.
"You spoke, a little time ago," she continued, "of some great
crisis with which your country might soon come face to face.
Might I ask you this: were you thinking of war with the United
States?"
He looked at her in silence for several moments.
"Dear Miss Penelope," he said,--"may I call you that? Forgive me
if I am too forward, but I hear so many of our friends--"
"You may call me that," she interrupted softly.
"Let me remind you, then, of what we were saying a little time
ago," he went on. "You will not take offence? You will
understand, I am sure. Those things that lie nearest to my heart
concerning my country are the things of which I cannot speak."
"Not even to me?" she pleaded. "I am so insignificant. Surely I
do not count?"
"Miss Penelope," he said, "you yourself are a daughter of that
country of which we have been speaking.
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