And then she stopped him.
"Always," she said, "you and I seem to be talking of things that are dead and past, or of a future which is out of our reach.

Isn't it possible to speak now and then of the present ?" "Of the actual present ?" he asked softly.

"Of this very moment ?" "Of this very moment, if you will," she answered.

"Your fairy tale the other night was wonderful, but it was a long way off." The Prince was summoned away somewhat abruptly to bid farewell to a little stream of departing guests.

Today, more than ever, he seemed to belong, indeed to the world of real and actual things, for a cousin of his mother's, a Lady Stretton-Wynne, was helping him receive his guests--his own aunt, as Penelope told herself more than once, struggling all the time with a vague incredulity.