'Me,' said the King, just as you or I might have done.
'You're late,' said the Cat. 'I'm afraid you've lost your chance.'
'I took the first chance I got,' said the King. 'Let me in, and let me see her.'
He had been so busy all these years trying to find the bright white light of his dreams that he had not noticed that his hair had gone gray long ago.
So the Cat let him in, and led him up the winding stair to the room where the Princess, very quiet, lay on her white bed waiting for death to come, for she was very tired.
The old King stumbled across the bar of moonlight on the floor, flung down a clanking wallet, and knelt by the bed in the deep shadow, saying:
'Oh, my dear own Princess, I have come at last.'
'Is it really you?' she said, and gave him her hands in the shadow. I hoped it was Death's foot-step I heard coming up the winding stair.'
'Oh, did you hope for death,' he cried, 'while I was coming to you?'
'You were long in coming,' said she, 'and I was very tired.'
'My beautiful dear Princess,' he said, 'you shall rest in my arms till you are not tired any more.'
'My beautiful King,' she said, 'I am not tired any more now.'
And then the Cat came in with the lamp, and they looked in each other's eyes.
Instead of the beautiful Princess of his dreams the King saw a white, withered woman whose piteous eyes met his in a look of longing love. The Princess saw a bent, white-haired man, but love was in his eyes.
They both spoke together. And both thought they spoke the truth. But the truth was that both were horribly disappointed.
'Yet, all the same,' said the King to himself, 'old and withered as she is, she is more to me than the youngest and loveliest of all other Princesses.'
'I don't care if he _is_ gray,' said the Princess to herself; 'whatever he is, he's the only possible one.'
'Here's a pretty kettle of fish!' said the Cat. 'Why on earth didn't you come before?'
'I came as soon as I could,' said the King.
The Cat, walking about the room in an agitated way, kicked against the wallet the King had dropped.
'What's this,' she said crossly, rubbing her toes, for the wallet was hard, and she had hurt herself more than a little.
'Oh, that,' said the King--'that's just the steel bolts and hammers and things that my resolves to find the Princess turned into when I failed and never did find her. I never could bear to throw them away; I had a sort of feeling that they might be good for something, since they hurt me so much when they came to me. I thought perhaps I could batter down the doors of the Princess's tower with them.'