The Crown Prince had pondered. "He must have felt like jelly,"
he remarked, and Miss Braithwaite had dropped the subject.

So now, with freedom and his week's allowance, except the outlay
for the fig woman, in his pocket, Prince Ferdinand William Otto
started for the Land of Desire. The allee was almost deserted.
It was the sacred hour of coffee. The terraces were empty, but
from the coffee-houses along the drive there came a cheerful
rattle of cups, a hum of conversation.

As the early spring twilight fell, the gas-lamps along the allee,
always burning, made a twin row of pale stars ahead. At the end,
even as the wanderer gazed, he saw myriads of tiny red, white,
and blue lights, rising high in the air, outlining the crags and
peaks of the sheet-iron mountain which was his destination. The
Land of Desire was very near!

There came to his ears, too, the occasional rumble that told of
some palpitating soul being at that moment hurled and twisted and
joyously thrilled, as per the lieutenant's description.

Now it is a strange thing, but true, that one does not reach the
Land of Desire alone; because the half of pleasure is the sharing
of it with someone else, and the Land of Desire, alone, is not
the Land of Desire at all. Quite suddenly, Prince Ferdinand
William Otto discovered that he was lonely. He sat down on the
curb under the gas-lamp and ate the fig woman's head, taking out
the cloves, because he did not like cloves. At that moment there
was a soft whirring off to one side of him, and a yellow bird,
rising and failing erratically on the breeze, careened suddenly