She was the princess, and a human girl. Sincere, simple, with an earnest love for all things everywhere, she hated royal pomp with a hatred that was passion. In her light, bright eyes was the uncopyrighted story of human struggle, of contending human emotions. You were impressed at first glance that she was composed of the purifying and preservative forces that have made civilization. For a princess, she was refreshingly real. This, then, was the girl to be sacrificed for a political alliance. The prince selected was a jellyfish personage with enough blue blood to give a girl with as much red blood as the princess the blues. With all her stubborn individuality, she rebelled against the selfish decree of the Court, but when her aged father, the king, sternly commanded her, as her father and sovereign, to fulfill his mandate, the girl choked down the rising lump, acceded and accepted the ring as a pledge of the betrothal. Then she flew to her room, and the girl conquered the princess. In a wild abandon of grief, she sobbed her pitiful apology to herself, and felt better. And the thought was born. She would go to the home of her old nurse, and live among the people. She would live free from the iron fetters of regal birth, free from the slavery of royal lineage. She went out and met life, merged and mingled with its rushing tides and varied sides. And among the people, with hearts that beat with the heat of life, she found love and lost her heart. The blow was too great for the weak heart in the old frame of the king, and he died, as he had lived, a martyr to royalty. And the girl was proclaimed queen. For the moment the realization and appreciation that she was queen and could do as she willed and wished, surged through her, and her being filled with fervent ecstasy. Then she remembered the cost of her birth, remembered the state and the people and her duty to them, saw and realized that she had contemplated turning traitoress to the government of which she was queen; and in sadness and resignation she dismissed the man she loved, to marry the thing her nation needed. For she was queen, to live in garish grief and wear a golden sorrow until death emancipated her from the slavery of the throne.