"Twenty-seven," he answered. "I was born twenty-seven years ago in the Grimmburg. Ever since then I've had a strenuous and lonely time of it."
She did not answer. And suddenly he saw her eyes, under her slightly frowning eye-brows, move to his side. Yes, although he was standing sideways to her with his right shoulder towards her, as he had trained himself to do, he could not prevent her eyes fastening on his left arm, on the hand which he had planted right back on his hip.
"Were you born with that?" she asked softly.
He grew pale. But with a cry, which rang like a cry of redemption, he sank down before her, and clasped her wondrous form in both his arms. There he lay, in his white trousers and his blue and red coat with the major's shoulder-straps.
"Little sister," he said, "little sister"
She answered with a pout: "Think of appearances, Prince. I consider that one should not let oneself go, but should keep up appearances on all occasions."
But he was too far gone, and raising his face to her, his eyes in a mist, he only said, "Imma—little Imma"
Then she took his hand, the left, atrophied one, the deformity, the hindrance in his lofty calling, which he had been wont from boyhood to hide artfully and carefully—she took it and kissed it.
