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
