"Don't be!" Mr. Heatherbloom could, in fancy, see the flash of a white
hand amid red flowers; eyes dancing like violets in the wind. He could
perceive, also, as plainly as if he were in that other room, the deep
ardent eyes of the prince downbent upon the blither ones, the commanding
figure of the man near that other slender, almost illusive presence. A
flower to be grasped only by a bold wooer, like the prince!

"Don't be," she repeated. "You are so much more charming when you are
not. I think I heard that line in a play once. One of the Robertson
kind; it was given by a stock company in San Francisco. That's where I
came from, you know. Have you ever been there?"

"No," said the prince slowly.

Dark eyes trying to beat down the merriment in the blue ones! Mr.
Heatherbloom could, in imagination, "fill in" all the stage details. If
it only were "stage" dialogue; "stage" talk; not "playing with love", in
earnest!

"Playing with love!" He had read a book of that name once; somewhere.
In Italy?--yes. It sounded like an Italian title. Something very
disagreeable happened to the heroine. A woman, or a girl, can not
lightly "play with love" with a Sicilian. But, of course, the prince
wasn't a Sicilian.

"No," he was saying now with admirable poise, in answer to her question,
"I haven't visited your wonderful Golden Gate, but I hope to go there
some day--with you!" he added. His words were simple; the accent alone
made them sound formidable; it seemed to convey an impregnable purpose,