of work to find out the truth. Now I couldn’t confess,” she concluded quietly, and made a bitter movement with her mouth.
Prokop was disturbed by her continued self-analysis, in which he saw a morbid desire for self-torture. He tried to find something else to talk about and discovered to his consternation that if they did not speak about love they had nothing to say to one another. They were standing on the bastion. It gave the Princess a certain relief to return to her past, to confess small but important things about herself. “Soon after I confessed we had a dancing master who fell in love with my governess, a stout woman. I heard about it and . . . saw them. It disgusted me. Oh! But all the same I spied on them and . . . I couldn’t understand. And then one day when we were dancing I suddenly understood, when he pressed himself against me. After that I wouldn’t let him touch me; in the end . . . I fired a shot-gun at him. We had to dismiss them both.
“At that time . . . I was terribly worried by mathematics; I simply hadn’t a head for it, you see? My teacher was a famous man, but unpleasant; you scientists are all extraordinary. He set me an exercise and looked at his watch; it had to be done in an hour. And when I had only five, four, three minutes left and I had still done nothing . . . my heart began to thump and I had such a horrible feeling” She dug her fingers into Prokop’s arm and drew in her breath. “Then I got to like those lessons.
“When I was nineteen they selected a husband
