t first Paul could hardly believe his senses. He was conscious, as he gazed into the depths of two marvellous eyes, of a tall supple figure all in black, a crimson rose in her dark hair lending a touch of color—that, and her red lips.

This was the face that had burned its lineaments into the tablets of his memory—the face so sweetly known at Lake Lucerne.

The babble of the arriving guests—the strains of the orchestra—became as the faint murmurs of a far off sea.

For Paul, one fact, and only one, existed—it was she—his Lady of the Beauteous Countenance; no vision, but a bewitching creature of flesh and blood whose gloved hand rested for a moment in his own.

As in a dream Paul heard the lady's name—the same that he had learned at Lucerne—and he felt himself murmuring something—what the words were he scarcely knew.

Not by so much as the quiver of an eyelash did Mademoiselle give sign of recognition, or memory of any previous meeting. She merely smiled as she told Paul that her old friend the Countess had often spoken of him.

His heart was athrob with curious emotions, when he heard the Countess' voice:

"Come! we are going in. You two can become better acquainted at table." And he felt his partner's arm rest lightly within his; its merest touch electrified him.

"Damn the dinner!" Paul swore softly to himself, for he had no wish to share his good fortune with a roomful of people.

To his great disgust, a silly ass of a young German attachÉ, who sat on the other side of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, began talking with her as soon as they had reached their places.

When Paul did have her to himself occasionally, she talked to him of England, the last subject he was interested in then. Not for a minute did she allow him an opportunity to lead her in the direction of Langres or Lucerne.

"I have never been across the Channel," she told him. "But I have long wished to go. You English are such a remarkable people—you are all so sane and sensible compared with my own countrymen. What Russian can talk with a woman for five minutes without making violent love to her?—but you cold-blooded Anglo-Saxons are so refreshingly different."

Paul did not see the mischievous merriment in the lady's eyes. And his gallant answer was interrupted by some inanity from Herr von Mark.

If ever the Anglo-German diplomatic relations were in danger, an observer would have promptly decided that they were at that instant. That the conceited young German did not immediately expire was only due to the fact that dagger glances cannot cause a fatal wound.

Paul tried to learn more about the lady. Was she to be long in Paris? Really, she could not say. She liked the country so much more than the town that it was always hard for her to stay many days away from the open. She never knew when the whim might seize her to go—to get aboard a train and hurry to some distant spot which she felt impelled to visit. Who knew? To-morrow, perhaps, might find her on her way to the chÂteau of a friend who lived in the Bukowina, near the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.

"Ah!"—and she turned to Paul with a radiant face that made him long to catch her in his arms—"do you know that wonderful country? Those fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests—their rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some peasant's hut, if need be."

"Tell me more!" Paul leaned toward her, forgetful now of all else but this divine and fascinating being.

"Ah!" she breathed, "you are a devotee of Nature, too, I know. You are a great traveller,—the Countess has said it," she continued quaintly. "You have been around the whole world. While as for me, I know Europe only, and of course Russia best of all countries. I have seen much of her—those wonderful rolling steppes, and rugged mountains. The North Sea, too, for I love the sea as my own soul.

"Often do I feel as though the sea were really in my soul itself. And as in the sea there are hidden water-plants, which only come to the surface at the moment they bloom, and sink again as soon as they fade, so at times do wondrous flower-pictures form in the depths of my soul, and rise up, shed perfume around, and gleam and vanish.... Then the ships that sail by! As you walk along the shore, is it not a pretty sight to see them—their great white sails look like stately swans. And still more beautiful is the sight when the setting sun throws great rays of glory round a passing bark."

In silence Paul gazed at her. He hardly breathed, lest some banal word should frighten this wonderful nymph away.

"And then at night,"—she went on dreamily—"what a strange and mysterious sensation the meeting with strange ships at sea produces. You fancy that perhaps your best friends, whom you have not seen for years, are sailing silently by, and that you are losing them forevermore."

Paul was strangely moved. He loved the sea himself, as well as the mountains—his Queen had taught him its call years ago—and he often wandered about the shore, pondering over the strange old legends with which centuries have wreathed it.

"You are wonderful!" he whispered to the lady. "You're like some water-maiden—and I believe your eyes are a bit of the sea itself!"

"Ah! Now you are like all the rest—French and Russians and Germans! Why spoil my rhapsody with personalities?"

"Forgive me!" Paul looked sufficiently penitent, and Mademoiselle with a playful gesture of absolution spoke again.

"It puts me in a strange and curious mood when I ramble along the shore in the twilight. Behind me are the flat dunes, before me the vast, heaving, immeasurable ocean, and above me the sky like an infinite crystal dome. Then I seem to be a very insect; and yet my soul expands to the size of the world. The high simplicity of Nature which surrounds me, elevates and oppresses me at the same time, more so than any other scene, however sublime. There never was any cathedral dome vast enough for me."

She stopped short, as if suddenly realizing she had stumbled upon dangerous ground.

And at that moment the Countess picked up the ladies with her eyes and they rose, to leave the men over their cigars. So Paul was left, to be drawn, willy-nilly, into a discussion of an international alliance, which did not interest him in the least.

Later when the men joined the ladies in the salon, Paul sought his sprite, but she was careful, or so it seemed, not to be left alone with him. And it was not until he said good-night that he could express to her the wish to see her again.

"You are such an uncertain lady," he said to her, smiling, "so restless within the confines of a town-house, that I hope you will let me call to-morrow—before you suddenly go dashing off to climb some peak, or to visit some foreign coast."

"Come for tea, to-morrow, if you wish." She looked up at him quickly—searchingly, Paul thought—and his blood raced madly through his veins.

Adieus were said, and Paul found himself again in his taximeter cab. In a state of mind quite different from that which had obsessed him on his way to the dinner, he arrived once more at the hÔtel.

"Ah! these mad English!" Paul's chauffeur said to himself as he pocketed an extravagant pourboire. "We see too few of them! Milord Rosbif must have been having some famous old wine over in the Faubourg St. Germain, is it not so?" he asked himself.

But it was the more exalted intoxication of the soul that sent Paul up the steps with the elastic stride of youth.

Who was she? Paul did not know, even now. Mademoiselle Vseslavitch had said nothing of her family or her home. Beyond the fact that she was Russian, and a friend of the Dalmatian Ambassador's wife—herself a Slav—Paul was still ignorant. Indeed, for all he knew, she might be some poor relation—lack of fortune was the only possible reason he could ascribe for her being unmarried. Beautiful and attractive women, of good family—if they were rich—did not wander over the Continent long without husbands. Well—that mattered nothing. Thank heaven, he was not bound by any necessity of fortune.

Before he switched off his light that night Paul took from one of his boxes a small flat object of red morocco inlaid with gold. He lifted a tiny lid and there, through wide-set and strangely fascinating eyes a lady looked at him. It was the most amazing miniature Paul had ever seen. And the face depicted there with some unknown master's consummate skill—how often had it proved for him the only consolation he could find in the whole world.

His eyes dimmed as they conveyed to him the image of his still beloved Imperatorskoye—he pressed the bauble to his lips. Ah! God! the cold glass! How different from her melting kiss!

Not easily did he control his emotions. Of late years he seldom opened the portrait because of the almost overwhelming rush of memories it always brought to him.

"There is a strange resemblance," he mused, after he had carried the miniature where the light shone full upon it. Was it the strong predominance of the Russian type which stamped alike the features of his dead Queen and the living lady he had seen that evening? Paul could not tell. He closed the case reluctantly. Never had he expected to see another comparable to his long lost love. Well, he was drifting, perhaps. Who knew?

And yet he felt again, as his hand rested upon the precious casket, that she in her wisdom must be cognizant of it all. Indeed, Paul had gone through the years of his manhood with a feeling that her presence was always near to him. The conviction that had come to him as he had stood in the Cathedral at Langres was too strong to be shaken off. Whatever happened—and Paul meant to win the woman he had that night left in the Faubourg St. Germain—he felt sure his Queen had willed it.

Such is the inexplicable influence that the dead sometimes exert. I will not try to tell you more of that now. It would take too long. And I should first have to tell you about many sad things that happened a score of years ago, if you do not know them already. And then I might become melancholy. It is my pleasure instead to tell another story altogether, which is joyful and appropriate. And it is this very story which I mean to tell in this book.