"do you know why i have just told you these lies?" she appealed to the prince, of a sudden, with the most childlike candour, and with the laugh still trembling on her lips. "because when one tells a lie, if one insists on something unusual and eccentric something too ‘out of the way’ for anything, you know the more impossible the thing is, the more plausible does the lie sound. i’ve noticed this. but i managed it badly; i didn’t know how to work it." she suddenly frowned again at this point as though at some sudden unpleasant recollection.