No one could have been more surprised than the Reverend Eustace Medlicott at the behavior of his betrothed. Far from showing any contrition for her unseemly absence upon the arm of a perfect stranger, and a foreigner to boot, Stella had returned to the fold of her relations' group with a demure and radiant face, and when Eustace had ventured some querulous reproaches, she had cut him short by saying she had done as she wished and did not intend to listen to any remarks about it.

"You will have to learn more humbleness of mind, my dear child," he retorted sternly. "I cannot allow you to reply to your future husband in this independent tone."

"I shall just answer as I please," said Stella, and felt almost inclined to laugh, he looked so cross and amazed. Then she turned and talked to the cousin, Mr. Deanwood, and took no further notice of him.

Mr. Medlicott burned with annoyance. Stella would really have to be careful or he would not go on with the match—he had no intention of taking to wife a woman who would defy him—there was Nancy Ruggles ready to be his slave—and others besides her. And his career could be just as well assisted by the Bishop's daughter as by Canon Ebley's niece, even though her uncle was a crotchety and unknown Lord, patron of two fat livings. But Stella, with a rebellious little curl loosened on her snowy neck and a rebellious pout upon her cherry lips, was so very alluring a creature to call one's own, the desire of the flesh, which he called by any other name, fought hard with his insulted spirit, though to give in would be too ignominious; she must say she was sorry first, and then he could find it in his heart to forgive her. But the opportunity to show this magnanimity was not vouchsafed to him by fate—for other people were introduced to the party by Mr. Deanwood, and he did not exchange a word alone with his erring fiancee until she said a cold good-night in the hall of the Grand Hotel.

"Stella, remain for a moment, I wish to speak to you," he said in the voice in which he was accustomed to read the burial service.

But she feigned not to hear and followed her Aunt Caroline's black velvet train on to the lift and at that same moment a discreet-looking foreign servant came up and handed him a note.

He read it in surprise—who could be sending him a note at a quarter past twelve at night?

Dear Sir [it ran],

I shall be greatly obliged if you can spare to me half an hour before retiring to your rest to converse upon a matter of importance. I had the honor of making your acquaintance to-night at your Embassy. If you will grant me this favor I will wait upon you immediately in the hall, or, if you prefer, my sitting-room; my servant could conduct you here, and we shall have the advantage of being entirely undisturbed. I remain, sir, Yours truly.

SASHA ROUMOVSKI.

Eustace Medlicott gasped with astonishment. This Russian gentleman was evidently in need of his ministrations and perhaps advice. He would go to his room, certainly, there were still some people in the hall having late coffee and refreshment after the theater.

He indicated by a condescending movement that he was ready to follow the waiting servant, and soon found himself being shown into Count Roumovski's sitting-room. It was luxuriously appointed and represented every appearance of manly comfort. There were quantities of books and papers about and the smell of excellent cigars, and put carelessly aside were various objets d'art which antique dealers had evidently sent for his grand seigneur's approval.

Count Roumovski was standing by the mantelpiece and looked very tall and commanding in his evening dress.

"It is most good of you to come," he said, while he indicated a big arm-chair for his visitor to sit in—he did not offer to shake hands. "It was certainly my duty to have called upon you, my only apology for getting you to ascend here is that the subject I wish to converse with you is too serious for both of us to admit of interruptions."

"Indeed," said Mr. Medlicott, pompously—growing more surprised each moment. "And may I ask the nature of your trouble?"

Count Roumovski did not change his position by the mantelpiece and he kept still as a bronze statue as he spoke in a courteous tone:

"It is not a trouble at all," he began, gravely, "on the contrary, it is a great joy and honor for me. I will state the facts immediately. I understand that for a short while you have been engaged to be married to Miss Stella Rawson, the niece of the respected English clergyman, the Reverend Ebley—"

"Pardon me," interrupted Mr. Medlicott acidly, "but I do not see how my private affairs can interest you, sir, I cannot—"

But the host in turn interrupted him.

"If you will be so good as to listen patiently, you will find that this matter is of vital importance—may I proceed?"

Mr. Medlicott bowed; what more could he do? Count Roumovski went on:

"I understand that Miss Rawson never showed very strong affection for you or great desire for this union—so what I have to ask now is, if you, as a gentleman, will release her from her promise to you and set her free."

"Upon my word, sir, this is too much," Mr. Medlicott exclaimed, starting to his feet, "by what authority do you say these preposterous things? You were only introduced to Miss Rawson and myself to-night. You must be mad!"

"No, I am quite sane. And I say them upon the best authority," Count Roumovski continued, "because I love Miss Rawson myself, and I am deeply honored by believing that in return she loves me—not you at all. Therefore, it is common sense to ask you to release her, and let her be happy with the person she prefers—is it not so?"

Eustace Medlicott had grown white with anger and astonishment as he listened, and now broke in hotly, forgetful of his intoning voice or anything but his outraged dignity.

"When have you had the opportunity to try and undermine the faith of my betrothed, may I ask? Supposing you are saying this seriously and not as some ill-timed jest."

Count Roumovski lifted his eyebrows a little and looked almost with pity at his adversary. "We are not talking in the heroic manner," he replied, unmoved by the other's taunt, "we are, I presume, two fairly intelligent men discussing this affair together—there has been no question of undermining. Miss Rawson and myself found we understood each other very soon after we first met. Surely, you must realize, sir, that love cannot be commanded, it will not come or go at one's bidding. These ridiculous bonds of convention, holding to a promise given when the spirit to keep it is no longer there, can ruin people's lives."

Mr. Medlicott drew himself up, he was not quite so tall as the Russian, but of no mean height, and his intense, ascetic face, emaciated to extreme leanness, now reddened with passion, while the veins stood out upon his high, narrow forehead. He was always very irritable when crossed, and his obstinate nature was strongly combative.

"You forget, sir," he said angrily, "you are insulting my honor."

"Not the least in the world—you do not understand the point," Count Roumovski returned calmly. "Listen for a minute—and I will explain. If Miss Rawson were already your wife I should be, and you would have the right to try and kill me, did your calling permit of that satisfaction of gentlemen, because there is a psychological and physiological reason involved in that case, producing the instinct in man which he is not perhaps conscious of, that he wishes to be sure his wife's legitimate offspring are his own—out of this instinct, civilization has built up the idea of a man's honor—which you can see has a basic principle of sense and justice."

Mr. Medlicott with difficulty restrained himself from interrupting and the Russian went on.

"The situation of betrothed is altogether different: in it there have merely been promises exchanged, promises, for the most part, which no man or woman can honestly engage with any certainty to keep, because feeling toward the other is not within his or her control—both are promising upon a sentiment, not a reality."

"I totally disagree with you," Eustace Medlicott answered angrily, "when men and women make promises to one another they should have wills strong enough to keep them."

"For what sensible reason?" Count Roumovski asked. "In a case where the happiness of both is involved, and where no damage has been incurred by either—"

Mr. Medlicott clasped his hands convulsively but he did not reply—so the Russian went on:

"Surely, you must see that a woman should be free to marry—that is, to give herself and her power to become a mother where she loves—not to be forced to bestow these sacred gifts when her spirit is unwilling—just because she has made the initial mistake of affiancing herself to a man, often through others' influence, who she discovers afterward is distasteful to her. Cannot you realize that it is wise for himself as well as for her that this man release her, before a life of long misery begins for them both?"

Mr. Medlicott never analyzed reasons, and never listened to other people's logic, and if he had any of his own he was too angry to use it. He was simply conscious now that a foreigner had insulted him and appeared to have stolen the affections of his betrothed, and his sacred calling precluded all physical retaliation—which, at the moment, was the only kind that would have given him any satisfaction. He prepared to stalk furiously from the room after he should receive an answer to an all-important question.

"The whole thing is disgraceful," he said, "and I shall inform Miss Rawson's uncle and aunt of your highly insulting words to me, that they may guard her from further importunity upon your part. But I should like to know, in fairness, how far you are stating you have been able to persuade my fiancee to agree to your view?"

"I am sorry you should have become so heated and angry," Count Roumovski returned, "because it stops all sensible discussion. I deeply regret having been forced to inflict pain upon you, but if you would give yourself time to think calmly you would see that, however unfortunate the fact may be for you of Miss Rawson's affections having become fixed on me—these things are no one's fault and beyond human control—Miss Rawson has left the breaking off of her engagement to you in my hands, and has decided that she desires to marry me, as I desire to marry her, as soon as she is free."

"I refuse to listen to another word," Mr. Medlicott flashed, "and I warn you, sir, that I will give no such freedom at your bidding—on the contrary, I shall have my marriage with Miss Rawson solemnized immediately, and try, if there is a word of truth in your preposterous assertion that she loves you, to bring her back to a proper sense of her duty to me and to God, repressing her earthly longings by discipline and self-denial, the only true methods for the saving of her soul. And I and her natural guardians, her uncle and her aunt, will take care that you never see her again."

Count Roumovski raised his eyebrows once more and prepared to light a cigar.

"It is a pity you will not discuss this peacefully, sir," he said, "or apparently even think about it yourself with common sense. If you would do so, you would begin by asking yourself what God gave certain human beings certain attributes for," he blew a few whiffs of smoke, "whether to be wasted and crushed out by the intolerance of others,—or whether to be tended and grow to the highest, as flowers grow with light and air and water."

"What has that got to do with the case?" asked Mr. Medlicott, tapping his foot uneasily.

"Everything," went on the Russian, mildly, "you, I believe, are a priest, and therefore should be better able to expound your Deity's meaning than I, a layman—but you have evidently not the same point of view—mine is always to look at the facts of a case denuded of prejudice—because the truth is the thing to aim at—"

"You would suggest that I am not aiming at the truth," the clergyman interrupted, trembling now with anger, so that he fiercely grasped the back of a high chair, "your words are preposterous, sir."

"Not at all," Count Roumovski continued. "Look frankly at things; you have just announced that you would constitute yourself judge of what is for Miss Rawson's salvation."

"Leave her name out, I insist," the other put in hotly.

"To be concrete, unfortunately, I cannot do so," the Russian said. "I must speak of this lady we are both interested in—pray, try to listen to me calmly, sir, for we are here for the settling of a matter which concerns the happiness of our three lives."

"I do not admit for a moment that you have the right to speak at all,"
Mr. Medlicott returned, but his adversary went on quietly.

"You must have remarked that Miss Rawson possesses beauty of form, sweet and tender flesh, soft coloring, and a look of health and warmth and life. All these charms tend to create in man a passionate physical love. That is cause and effect. For the sake of the present argument we will, for the moment, leave out all more important questions of the soul and things mental and spiritual. Well, who gave her these attributes? Did you or I—or even her parents, consciously? Or did the Supreme Being, whom you call God, endow her so? Admitted that He did—have you, then, or anyone else, the right to crush out the result of His endowment in a woman; crush her joy of them, force her into a life where their possession is looked upon as a temptation? Seek to marry her—remember that marriage physically means being certainly actuated to do so by their attraction—and yet believing that you sin each time you allow them to influence you." Count Roumovski's level voice took on a note of deep emotion and his blue eyes gleamed. "Why, the degradation is horrible to think of, sir, if you will face the truth—and this is the fate to which you would condemn this young and tender girl for your own selfishness, knowing she does not love you."

Eustace Medlicott walked up and down rapidly for a moment; he then picked up a book and threw it aside again in agitation. He was very pale now.

"I refuse to have the woman I have decided to marry snatched from me by any of your sophistries," he said breathlessly. "I am better able than you to save her soul, and she owes me honor and obedience—it is most unseemly to even mention the aspects you have done in a bond which is a sacrament of holy church and should be only approached in a spiritual frame of mind, not a carnal one."

"You are talking pure nonsense, sir," returned Count Roumovski sternly. "If that were the case the wording of your English marriage service would be different. First and foremost, marriage is a contract between two people to live together in union of body and to procreate children, which is the law of God and nature. Men added arrangement and endowment of property, and the church added spiritual sacrament. But God and nature invented the vital thing. If it were not so, it would have been possible for the spiritually minded, of which company you infer yourself to be, to live with a woman on terms of brother and sister, and never let the senses speak at all. There would then have been no necessity for the ceremony of marriage for priests with your views."

Eustace Medlicott shook with passion and emotion as he answered furiously: "You would turn the question into one of whether a priest should marry or not. It is a question which has agitated me all my life, and which I have only lately been able to come to a conclusion upon. I refuse to let you disturb me in it."

"I had not thought of doing so," Count Roumovski returned tranquilly. "You and your views and your destiny do not interest me, I must own, except in so far as they interfere with myself and the woman I love. You have proved yourself to be just a warped atom of the great creation, incapable of anything but ignoble narrowness. You cannot even examine your own emotions honestly and probe their meaning or you would realize no man should marry, be he priest or layman, if he looks upon the joys of physical love as base and his succumbing to them a proof of the power of the beast in himself. Because he then lives under continual degradation of soul by acting against his conscience."

Mr. Medlicott was now silent, almost choking with perturbation. So
Count Roumovski went on:

"The wise man faces the facts of nature. Looks straight to find God's meaning in them, and then tries to exalt and ennoble them to their loftiest good. He does not, in his puny impotence, quarrel with the all-powerful Creator and try to stamp out that with which He thought fit to endow human beings."

"Your words convey a flagrant denial of original sin, and I cannot listen to such an argument," Mr. Medlicott flashed, his anger now at white heat. "You would do away with a whole principle of the Christian religion."

"No; I would only do away with a faulty interpretation which man grafted upon it," Count Roumovski answered.

Then the two men glared straight into each other's eyes for a moment, and Eustace Medlicott quailed beneath the magnetic force of the Russian's blue ones—he turned away abruptly. He was too intolerant of character and too disturbed now to permit himself to hear more of these reasonings. He could but resort to protest and let his wrath rise to assist him.

"It cannot benefit either Miss Rawson or ourselves to continue this unseemly controversy over her," he said in a raucous voice. "I have told you I will give no freedom upon your request—and I have warned you of my action. Now I shall go," and he took three steps toward the door.

But Count Roumovski's next words arrested him a moment; his tone was no longer one of suave, detached calmness, but sharp and decisive, and his bearing was instinct with strength and determination.

"Since we are coming to warnings," he said, "we drop the velvet glove. The discourtesy to a lady conveyed in your words obliges me to use my own way without further consulting you for assisting her wishes. I will again thank you for coming up here and will have the honor to wish you goodnight." With which he opened the door politely and bowed his visitor out.

And when he was alone Count Roumovski sat down by the open window and puffed his cigar meditatively for some minutes, smiling quietly to himself as he mused:

"Poor, stupid fellow! If people could only be honest enough with themselves to have a sensible point of view! It is all so simple if they would get down to the reason of things without all this false sentiment. Of what use to chain the body of a woman to one man if her spirit is with another? Of what use to talk of offended honor with high-sounding words when, if one were truthful, one would own it was offended vanity? Of what use for this narrow, foolish clergyman to protest and bombast and rave, underneath he is actuated by mostly human motives in his desire to marry my Stella? When will the world learn to be natural and see the truth? Love of the soul is the divine part of the business, but it cannot exist without love of the body. As well ask a man to live upon bread without water."

Then he moved to his writing table and composed rapidly a letter to his beloved in which he recounted to her the result of the interview and the threats of her late fiance, and the humor in which he had quitted the room, and from that she might judge of what she must reasonably expect. He advised her, as he was unaware of how far the English authority of a guardian might go, to feign some fatigue and keep her room next day and on no account whatever to be persuaded to leave Rome or the hotel. He told her that in the morning he would endeavor to see her uncle and aunt, but if they refused this interview, he would write and ask formally for her hand, and if his request were treated with scorn, then she must be prepared to slip away with him to the Excelsior Hotel and be consigned to the care of the Princess Urazov, his sister, who would have arrived from Paris. The business part of the epistle over, he allowed himself half a page of love sentences—which caused Miss Rawson exquisite delight when she read them some moments later.

She had not gone to bed directly, she was too excited and full of new emotions to be thinking of sleep, and when she heard Ivan's gentle tap at her door she crept to it and whispered without opening it:

"Who is there?"

A low voice answered: "Une lettre pour mademoiselle." And the epistle was slipped into the little box for letters on the door. She went back to her wide window and looked out on the darkness after she had read it. She saw there would be trouble ahead, she knew Eustace Medlicott's obstinate spirit very well, and also the rigid convention of Aunt Caroline—but to what lengths they would go she formulated no guess.

It all seemed so secure and happy and calm now with such a man to lean upon as Sasha Roumovski. Nothing need ruffle or frighten her ever any more. And then she read the love sentences again and thrilled and quivered there in the warm, soft night. Sasha Roumovski's influence over her had grown so strong that not a questioning speculation as to the step she meant to take any longer entered her head. She felt she knew at last what love's meaning truly was, and nothing else mattered in the world—which, indeed, was the truth!

Meanwhile, the Reverend Eustace Medlicott, burning with fury, had stalked to his room, and there tried to think of what he had better do. He feared it was too late to communicate with Canon and Mrs. Ebley—they would have retired to bed, and Stella, also. Here his thoughts were brought up with violent suddenness. Was she quite safe? Heavens above! and he turned quite cold—foreigners might be capable of any outrage—but presently he dismissed this fear. People always locked their doors in hotels, and Stella, though she had apparently shown herself sadly unworthy of his regard, was a thoroughly well brought-up young woman, and would not be likely to bandy words in the night with any young man. But on the morrow he would insist upon their all leaving the hotel and Rome itself—no more chances of her communicating with this hateful Russian count should be risked.

As the Ebley party had only arrived three days ago in the city, it was clearly impossible that the affair could have gone far, and as he had heard of their sightseeing and knew Mrs. Ebley would be extremely unlikely to allow Stella out of her sight in any case, he could not imagine how his fiancee and the Russian could have found a chance to speak—and even a foreigner could not persuade a woman into this course of action in half an hour's talk at the Embassy! The whole thing must be the ravings of a madman, nothing more, and Stella herself would be the first to explain that point on the morrow.

But even this comforting thought could not quite calm him—there remained disquieting recollections of certain forcible arguments he had been obliged to listen to against his will which had hit some part of his inner consciousness usually impregnably protected by his self-conceit. And it was an hour or two before he was able to drink his barley water and retire to rest, which he felt he badly needed after his long journey and uncomfortably exciting evening.