"Certainly I was under the impression," said Klaus Heinrich, "that the Countess was letting herself go when she drivelled."
"That's how it is, Prince. She is quite conscious of drivelling, and often laughs as she does so, or lets her hearers understand that she doesn't mean any harm by it. Her strangeness is a beneficent disorder, which she can control to a certain extent, and which she allows herself to indulge in. It is, if you prefer it, a want of----"
"Of self-restraint," said Klaus Heinrich, and looked down at his reins.
"Right, of self-restraint," she repeated, and looked at him. "You don't seem to approve of that want, Prince."
"I consider as a general rule," he answered quietly, "that it is not right to let oneself go and to make oneself at home, but that self-restraint should always be exercised, whatever the circumstances."
"Your Highness's doctrine," she answered, "is a praiseworthy austerity." Then she pouted, and, wagging her dark head in its three-cornered hat, she added in her broken voice: "I'll tell you something, Highness, and please note it well. If your Eminence is not inclined to show a little sympathy and indulgence and mildness, I shall have to decline the pleasure of your distinguished company once and for all."
He dropped his head, and they rode a while in silence.
"Won't you go on to tell me how the Countess came to you?" he asked at last.
"No, I won't," she said, and looked straight in front of her. But he pressed her so pleadingly that she finished her story and said: "And although fifty other companions applied, my choice--for the choice rested with me--fell at once on her, I was so much taken with her at my first interview. She was odd, I could see that: but she was odd only from too rich an experience of misery and wickedness, that was clear in every word she said; and as for me, I had always been a little lonely and cut off, and absolutely without experience, except what I got at my University lectures."
"Of course, you had always been a little lonely and cut off!" repeated Klaus Heinrich, with a ring of joy in his voice.
"That's what I said. It was a dull, simple life in some ways that I led, and still lead, because it has not altered much, and is all much the same. There were parties with 'lions' and balls, and often a dash in a closed motor to the Opera House, where I sat in one of the little boxes above the stalls, so as to be well observed by everybody, for show, as we say. That was a necessary part of my position."