“Yes, there you are,” said the Princess thoughtfully, as if this might be a still graver and more embarrassing fact than she had yet supposed it. “I take it there is nothing essentially impossible in my seeing you again; but it may very well be that you will never again find it so pleasant. Perhaps that’s the happiness that comes but once. At any rate, you know, I am going away.”
“Oh yes, of course; every one leaves town,” Hyacinth commented, sagaciously.
“Do you, Mr Robinson?” asked the Princess.
“Well, I don’t as a general thing. Nevertheless, it is possible that, this year, I may get two or three days at the seaside. I should like to take my old lady. I have done it before.”
“And except for that you shall be always at work?”
“Yes; but you must understand that I like my work. You must understand that it’s a great blessing for a young fellow like me to have it.”
“And if you didn’t have it, what would you do? Should you starve?”
“Oh, I don’t think I should starve,” the young man replied, judicially.
The Princess looked a little chagrined, but after a moment she remarked, “I wonder whether you would come to see me, in the country, somewhere.”
“Oh, dear!” Hyacinth exclaimed, catching his breath. “You are so kind, I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t be _banal_, please. That’s what other people are. What’s the use of my looking for something fresh in other walks of life, if you are going to be _banal_ too? I ask you, would you come?”
Hyacinth hesitated a moment. “Yes, I think I would come. I don’t know, at all, how I should do it—there would be several obstacles; but wherever you should call for me, I would come.”
“You mean you can’t leave your work, like that; you might lose it, if you did, and be in want of money and much embarrassed?”
“Yes, there would be little difficulties of that kind. You see that immediately, in practice, great obstacles come up, when it’s a question of a person like you making friends with a person like me.”
“That’s the way I like you to talk,” said the Princess, with a pitying gentleness that seemed to her visitor quite sacred. “After all, I don’t know where I shall be. I have got to pay stupid visits, myself, where the only comfort will be that I shall make the people jump. Every one here thinks me exceedingly odd—as there is no doubt I am! I might be ever so much more so if you would only help me a little. Why shouldn’t I have my bookbinder, after all? In attendance, you know, it would be awfully _chic_. We might have immense fun, don’t you think so? No doubt it will come. At any rate, I shall return to London when I have got through that _corvée;_ I shall be here next year. In the meantime, don’t forget me,” she went on, rising to her feet. “Remember, on the contrary, that I expect you to take me into the slums—into very bad places.” Why the idea of these scenes of misery should have lighted up her face is more than may be explained; but she smiled down at Hyacinth—who, even as he stood up, was of slightly smaller stature—with all her strange, radiant sweetness. Then, in a manner almost equally incongruous, she added a reference to what she had said a moment before: “I recognise perfectly the obstacles, in practice, as you call them; but though I am not, by nature, persevering, and am really very easily put off, I don’t consider that they will prove insurmountable. They exist on my side as well, and if you will help me to overcome mine I will do the same for you, with yours.”