"Oh, Max," cried his Countess, "don't do it, don't do it; it's wickedness! _I_ didn't matter; but this--oh, Max, you don't know what a grief and disappointment you'll be to me if you----"
"Dearly beloved friend," interrupted Max, "do give me credit for a morality not very greatly inferior to your own. After all I am your pupil."
"But you can't _marry_ her?" cried the Countess.
"Saving your presence, I mean to," asseverated Max.
"Charlotte will have three inches taken out of its rim and will fit it far better than I should--that is if anybody is so foolish as to object to my marrying where I please."
"Then in Heaven's name," cried the Countess, "why in all these years haven't you married me?"
Max smiled; they were back into easy relations once more. This was the lady with whom he had never spent a dull day.
"I did not wish to give you the pain of refusing me," said he. "Had I asked you you would have said that I was far too young to know my mind, and that you yourself were too old."
"Yes, I should," she admitted, "but you should have left me to say it." Then she returned to her original bewilderment. "But, my dear boy, if she is a sister of mercy she has taken vows."
"Oh, no, we don't do that in Jingalo. No Jingalese Church-woman may throw away her whole life on so problematical a benefit as a religious vow of celibacy. She may lease herself to Heaven for a given number of years, but freeholds are not allowed."
"And you call that a Church!" cried the Countess.
"Well," said the Prince, "I think that in this case she has got hold of a scientific point worth keeping. Seven years ago I was not, science tells me, the man that I am now; and seven years hence I shall be yet another. What right has my past man to bind this present 'me' in which he has no particle of a share?" And Max, having taken wing on a fresh notion, was off into flight when the Countess brought him to earth.
"And how long is your next lease going to be?" she inquired dryly, "if seven years is all you can answer for?"
"My next man will renew," said Max confidently.
"Sisters of mercy don't accept tenants on those terms," she retorted. And then, seeing that he looked at her with a benevolent eye, added, "Oh, yes, I know that I did, but that isn't the sort of mercy you are looking for now. You'll find, Max, that you need a religion in order to become a freeholder. Mark my word! There! I couldn't have put it better than that! And now as I've come to the end of _my_ lease I had better retire and see to dilapidations and repairs."