"What is troubling you, sir?" asked Sara, "you look pale."
"For once in my life I wish to do a foolish thing--_pour encourager les autres_," was his reply. "I intend to meddle with a love-affair."
"I will tell you presently. I never venture upon any work trusting alone to my hopes. I am not of those who discover rifts in their harness only on the morning of the battle! I prepare for all contingencies. First, then, let me put you through a little catechism. Do men ever believe evil reports about the women they love?"
"The _posse non peccare_ is not the _non posse peccare_," said Sara quickly.
"Do you mean that they can believe the evil, but, as a rule, they won't?" returned the Prince.
"You translate freely, but you have caught the spirit!"
"Very well. I come to my second question. Is a man better off with a dangerous woman whom he adores than with a good woman who adores _him_?"
"All men who desire love, deserve it," said Sara. "The _means_ to this are always, in a manner, certainties, the _end_ is always problematical. But those who want love could never be satisfied with mere welfare--never."
"You have a right to direct my opinion," he exclaimed; "where else do I hear such sound good sense? The usual women one meets in our circle are old, ugly, and proud--incapable of conversation with persons of intelligence. My wife," he added smoothly, "makes this complaint about her lady friends. It is very dull and very sad for her, although she is a saint."
No conversation or letter was ever exchanged between Sara and the Prince without some emphatic tribute to the sanctity, prudence, and charm of the Princess.
"And now," said His Excellency, drawing his chair an inch nearer, "I must be serious. You have guessed, of course, that I am thinking about Robert Orange and Mrs. Parflete. I stayed at Brookes's till after twelve last night in hopes of seeing Orange. I was discussing him with Lord Reckage."
"Reckage doesn't mind raising a blister, but he won't often tell one what he thinks."
Sara shivered a little and compressed her lips.
"Reckage is fond of Orange," she said, "yet there is a certain jealousy.... Formerly, Orange had need of Reckage, and depended on him; now Reckage needs him and depends on Orange. Could he but know it, Orange is the one creature who could pull him through his difficulties with the Bond of Association. A man who has no personal ambition, who desires nothing that any one can give, who fears nothing that any one can do, who lives securely in the presence of God, is a power we must not under-rate."