"Cut that part," said Donovan. "Nobody wants to start in abusing you."
"I am," said the King with an air of simple pride, "I am a blackguard, the blackest guard of all. Good. But I am a King and I am a gentleman. Good. I know that poor Corinne must go. She cannot stay here. That is what you would say, and you are right. I know it. There are _les convenances_. There is the charming Miss Donovan."
"That's it," said Donovan. "If it were simply a matter of Gorman and me----I don't like saying these things--but----"
"But you are right," said the King. "Right as nails. Corinne must go. But I go with her. To-morrow we depart, she and I. We take a boat. I row with oars. We fly. The navy of Megalia pursues. It overtakes. Good. We die. Perhaps the navy mistakes. It pursues by another route, a way we have not gone. Good. We live. Either way you shut us. No. We shut you. No. I have it. We are shut of us."
"That's rather a hopeless programme," said Gorman. "I don't suppose you can row much."
"The navy is a pretty rotten-looking tub," said Gorman. "But it can hardly help catching you. You won't even be out of sight before it has steam up."
The King sat down, looking very miserable. He made no pretence of liking the prospect before him.
"And Corinne," he murmured, "will be sick, as a dog is sick. She is sick always at sea."
Gorman and Donovan felt sorry for him. Donovan was particularly irritated at the situation in which he found himself.
"If it wasn't for my daughter----" he said. "But, damn it all, what can I do?"
"I wonder," said Gorman, "if it would be possible to--well, shall we say regularize the situation?"
He looked inquiringly at Donovan and then at the King. Donovan grasped the idea first.
"That's it," he said. "Look here," he turned to the King. "Why the hell don't you marry her at once? Then everything would be all right."
"Marry her!" said the King. "But that----Oh, damn! Oh Great Scott! That is impossible. You do not understand."
"It's the right thing to do," said Donovan, "besides being the only possible way out of the hole we are in. And I don't see the impossibility. If you're holding back on account of any mediæval European notions about monarchs being a different kind of flesh and blood from other people----"