THE PRINCESS SONIA

“THE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN ... HAD STEPPED BACK FROM HER EASEL.” ([SEE PAGE 3].)

THE PRINCESS SONIA

BY
JULIA MAGRUDER
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CHARLES DANA GIBSON

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1895
Copyright, 1895, by
The Century Co.
THE DE VINNE PRESS.
TO GENEVIEVE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE PRINCESS SONIA

I

MARTHA KEENE had been at work for several months in Etienne’s atelier, in the Latin quarter of Paris, and although her appearance would have led one to believe her frail in health, she had never missed a working-day, and always occupied a good position well in view of the model, because she always came among the earliest to secure it. Her work was far from brilliant, and Etienne had noticed her very little at first. If he did so more of late, it was her ability to stick which had won her this favor. So many students had come and gone, rousing his hopes only to disappoint them, that it had got to be rather a comfort to the little old man to be sure of one earnest worker always in her place; and while he could not say that her work was good, it was certainly not bad.

Recently he had told Martha this several times. “Not bad” was about the highest praise that most of Etienne’s pupils got from him; and when the young American girl heard it for the first time applied to her work, she experienced what was perhaps one of the most thrilling sensations of her life.

It was followed by another thrilling sensation; for, as she looked up from the canvas which the master had thus commended, she met the beautiful eyes of the princess, turned upon her with a congratulatory smile.

It was almost too much for Martha. Her heart thumped so that her breathing became rapid and a little difficult. Instead of answering the princess’s smile, a frown contracted her forehead; for she was afraid that she was going to lose her self-control, and she needed a stern effort not to do so. Martha had a heart which was made for worshiping. Etienne and the princess were two of the people that she worshiped, and there was a third.

When Etienne had passed on, after smudging one part of her drawing with his thumb until it was a dirty blur, and scratching another part with ruthless streaks of soft charcoal, she remembered she had received his first words of encouragement rather coldly, and had made the same sort of return for the princess’s smile. This plunged her from a state of delight into one of wretchedness. She looked toward the master with some hope of making amends; but he was too absorbed in his next criticism, and it was only too evident that her chance was gone. Then she glanced at the princess, to receive the same impression from that quarter. The beautiful young woman on whom her eyes rested had stepped back from her easel, and with her head turned sidewise, and her eyelids drawn up, was looking at her picture. She held a brush in one hand, with the fingers delicately poised, and in the other her palette, laid with brilliant dabs of color. Her lips were pursed critically, and her whole attitude and expression showed such absorption in her work that Martha felt it would be absurd to imagine that she or her behavior could have any part in that beautiful lady’s consciousness.

As usual, when Martha allowed herself to look at the princess, she forgot everything else. She had long ago had to make it a rule to place her easel so that she would be turned away from her enchantress while she was working; otherwise she could see and think only of her. At the present moment she was completely fascinated by the tall, strong figure, so firmly poised, with one foot advanced, and her body thrown backward from the slender waist, where a belt of old silver confined the folds of her red silk shirt-waist above the sweep of her skirt of dark green serge. This was her ordinary working-rig; and as she wore no apron, as most of the other students did, it was more or less streaked with paint. Martha herself wore her calico apron religiously, and was always neatly clothed beneath it; but she would have protested utterly against seeing her neighbor in an apron. It would have looked so unprincesslike! She was very tall and straight, this princess, and “Serene Highness” seemed to Martha to be written on every inch of her.

There was not much sociability among the students in the atelier. They came from many different countries, and spoke many different tongues; and they were such a mixture of aristocrats and plebeians—some were so afraid of patronizing and others of being patronized,—that the conditions generally were such as were opposed to much mixing. Talking was forbidden during work-hours, except the little absolutely necessary whispering; and in the intermission at noon the princess always went away for lunch, and sometimes did not return. Martha, too, went to her mother’s apartment for the midday meal, though nothing ever prevented her from returning. Some of the students had chums, with whom they chatted glibly in the cloak-room; but as a rule, these intimacies had been formed outside.

Martha Keene was a girl who would never have made the first advance toward an acquaintance with any one; for, although she had passed her twentieth year, she was incorrigibly shy. This reserve of manner was so evident that it discouraged advances from others. She knew this and regretted it, but could not help it.

It had pleased Martha very much when, on a single occasion, this wall of isolation which she had built around herself had been broken through by a little American chatterbox, who had rattled away to her for ten minutes one day as she was waiting for her carriage in the cloak-room. This had been soon after her entrance at Etienne’s, and her voluble country-woman had vanished from the horizon the next day; but in that one talk she had got almost all the knowledge of the atelier which she possessed.

Her informant had told her that the students were not supposed to inquire about one another at all, the ideal of the atelier being a place where high and low alike could lay aside their disabilities and get the benefits of the common workshop. She added that there had been several personages of importance studying there since she herself had been a student, but that she had always heard of it from the outside, and they had generally left before she had identified them. “I spotted the princess, though,” she had said. “As soon as I heard that there was a Russian princess studying here, I picked her out. Do you know which one she is?” Martha had answered, “The lady in the red blouse”—a guess at once confirmed. “Isn’t she stunning?” her companion had gone on; “I’m dying to speak to her! If she were not a princess, I’d have done it long ago. I can’t go the Russian; but no doubt she speaks every language. Russians always do.” At this point of the conversation the lady herself had come into the cloak-room. A neat French maid who was

“A LITTLE AMERICAN CHATTERBOX.”

in waiting had come forward, and held out her lady’s wrap, a magnificent sable thing, in which the beautiful creature had quickly infolded herself, and left the room, the two girls meanwhile making a tremendous effort to cover their breathless interest by an air of unconsciousness.

Ever since that day—indeed, even before it—Martha had been a silent worshiper at the shrine of the princess. She had a passionate love of beauty, and her heart, for all her grave and shy exterior, was packed as full of romance as it could hold. The discovery that this beautiful being was a princess—and a Russian princess, of all others—was meet food for this appetite for the romantic; and she dreamed by the hour about this young woman’s life, and wondered what it had been and was to be. She knew she could not be many years older than herself, and she wondered, with burning interest, whether she was or was not married. Sometimes she would hold to one opinion for days, and then something—a mere turn of expression, perhaps—would convert her to the opposite one. She wanted her to be unmarried, so that she might be free to construct from her imagination a beautiful future for her; and yet she dreaded to find out that she was married. There was certainly a look about the princess which contradicted Martha’s ideal of her as the possessor of a fair, unwritten life-page. Martha had watched her hands to see if she wore a wedding-ring; but those extraordinarily beautiful hands were either loaded down with jeweled gauds of antique workmanship or else quite ringless. Still, many married women were careless about wearing their wedding-rings, a thing which Martha herself could not comprehend; but she felt that this wonderful creature was removed as far as possible from her in both actuality and ideas.

Martha had heard the sound of the princess’s voice only once or twice, and on those occasions she had spoken French with what seemed to the American girl an absolutely perfect accent. Once she had been near enough to hear a little talk between the princess and Etienne, as he was criticizing the former’s work with rather more humanness, Martha thought, than he showed to the students generally; and once or twice when the princess had been placed near the model’s little retiring-room, Martha had had the joy of hearing her divinity give the summons, in the usual atelier jargon, “C’est l’heure!” It seemed to the girl a most lovable act of condescension on the part of her Serene Highness.

One day (it was the day after Etienne had told her that her drawing was “not bad,” and the princess had smiled at her) Martha was working away, when she became aware that an easel was being pushed into the unoccupied space at her right hand. She had known that some one would soon take possession of this place, and she did not even look round to see who it was. Her whole attention was bent on making Etienne see that his encouragement had yielded good fruit, even though she had made no verbal acknowledgment of it. She went on drawing, with intense concentration, until, weary at last, she put down her charcoal, and stood resting her arms, with her hands on her hips. As she finished her scrutiny of her work, and looked around, she started to discover that it was the princess who was seated at the easel next her own, and was looking full at her. As Martha, confused and delighted, encountered that gaze, the beautiful lady’s lips parted in a friendly smile, and she whispered gently,

“Bon jour.”

Martha crimsoned with pleasure as she returned the greeting, and then both fell to work again. The princess was painting, laying on her color in a broad and daring style that almost frightened her neighbor. Martha watched her furtively while she crumbled her bread, and pretended to be erasing and touching up certain points in her picture. It was a bewildering delight to her to stand so close to the princess and see her at work, and she was agreeably aware that the princess was also aware of her, and perhaps even pleased at their being together.

When the time came for the model to rest, and the quiet of the room was a little relieved by the whispered talk that sprang up among the students as they waited, Martha felt that the princess had inclined toward her a little, and was looking at her work. She put down as childish the impulse that rushed up in her to cover the picture from sight, or to say how bad she knew it was, and she stood very still and very much embarrassed until the princess said again, in that exquisite utterance of French subtleties,

“C’est bien difficile, n’est-ce pas?”

Martha answered her somehow—she never knew what.

When the model came back, and they began to work again, she felt that she had become part of a wonderful experience. She had never seen the princess talking to any one else, and, amazing and undeserved as the tribute was, she could not be mistaken in thinking that the lovely lady wished to know her, and perhaps to allow her the dear privilege of such intercourse as their atelier life permitted. She never expected it to go beyond that; but that was far more than anything she had imagined.

Across one corner of her canvas Martha’s name was scrawled in full, and she knew that the princess must have seen it. She looked to see if there was any signature upon the princess’s picture, and, as if interpreting her thought, her neighbor, with a brilliant smile, dipped her brush in vermilion, and wrote in a bold, strong hand the word “Sonia.” This name (which Martha did not know to be the Russian abbreviation of Sophia) seemed to the girl very odd and beautiful, and peculiarly appropriate to its possessor.

II

Martha said nothing to her mother and sisters of her encounter with the princess. She had a way of locking very close in her heart her most personal and sacred feelings, and all that related to the princess was sacred to her now. During her earlier years she had so often been laughed at for an enthusiast that she had learned to keep back what she felt most strongly; and for that very reason, perhaps, the intensity of her feelings grew greater as she grew older. The enthusiasm of her life was for her only brother, whom she worshiped with a blind idolatry of the extent of which even he was unaware. There had been one or two other divinities in her horizon, always second to Harold; but at this period of her life she was suffering from a sense of disappointment in these as, one after the other, they had come short of her ardent expectations. She was now, therefore, in the exact state of mind to take on a new object of worship. This the princess had become.

It was not surprising that Martha’s ideal had been so repeatedly unrealized, for it was a difficult one. She had suffered acutely from her former disappointments, and had even resolved never to pin her faith and hope on another woman. But the princess was not to be resisted. Martha felt that even if her goddess never spoke to her again, she was worthy of all adoration.

As the young girl drove through the streets of Paris in the early morning of the day following her brief interview with the princess, her heart was very happy.

In appearance Martha was small and rather plain; and no one would have noticed her, perhaps, but for the concentration of expression on her face as she looked out of the carriage window on her way to her atelier in the Latin Quarter. The people abroad at that hour were not of a class to pay much attention to such a look on a girl’s face. The little army of street-cleaners, occupying their brief hour with busy industry to produce the beautiful effect of gay cleanliness which the world enjoyed later in the day, had no time to notice Martha, and she was as unaware of them. Even the ice on the figures in the fountains of the Place de la Concorde, which she generally admired in passing, she did not so much as see to-day. The “cold sea-maidens” wore an unusually beautiful veil of mist, made by the freezing spray, and Martha might have got an impression for some future picture if she had studied it with the early sunlight on it.

But she was thinking only of the princess as she drove along and crossed the bridge and entered old Paris. Here, too, all was familiar, for Martha had taken this drive daily for months, and there was nothing to disturb her preoccupation until she reached the Invalides, where her hero-worshiping soul never failed to offer a passing tribute of awe to the ashes of Napoleon.

As she turned into a cross street farther on, a little funeral procession met her. This sight, too, was familiar; but no wont and usage could keep Martha from being deeply moved as often as she witnessed the pitiful little ceremonial which attends the burial of the very poor in Paris.

It is usually in the early morning that these funerals occur, as there seems to be a demand upon the poor to give up to the more prosperous even the space in the streets which they, with their dead, lay claim to for so short a time. This was a child’s funeral, or, rather, it was the funeral of two children. There was neither hearse nor carriage. Each little coffin was borne upon a wretched bier carried by rough and shabby men, who appeared cross and reluctant in their miserable, faded trappings of mourning. Looking carefully, Martha discovered that there was a separate family of mourners to each little bier; and as the whole procession was under the command of a tall old man, who held his shoulders very erect, as if to atone for a limp in one leg, she comprehended that this bedizened old undertaker, with the ragged crape on his cocked hat and the dirty bunches of black and white ribbons on the end of his long staff of office, had consolidated his duties, probably at a slight and very welcome discount to his poor patrons, and was burying the dead of two families at once. Directly after him came the bearers of the light coffin, and just behind it were five little children, four girls and a boy, walking abreast, and dressed in mourning. This mourning consisted of hastily fashioned aprons made of dull black calico, and so carelessly fitted that the many-colored undergarments of the children showed plainly at every opening. The children were regular little steps, the boy being the youngest; and cold as it was, they were all bareheaded. Each carried a sprig of yellow bloom, which resembled, if indeed it was not, the mustard-flower. This they held very stiffly and correctly in their right hands, and they walked with an air of the utmost decorum. Behind them came their father and mother, the former looking more apathetic than sad, and the latter carrying with some complacency the dignity of a dingy and draggled crape veil, in frank contrast to a blue-and-green plaid dress. She was taller than her husband, and leaned awkwardly upon his arm, keeping no time whatever to his shuffling gait. Then came the other coffin and the second group of mourners, who were evidently not so fashionable as the first; for they made no effort at mourning, and walked after their little dead one with nothing like a flower, and in their common working-clothes.

While Martha’s carriage was passing this

“A TALL OLD MAN.”

procession, she saw on the other side of them, going in the same direction with her, a smart turnout in which a gentleman was driving, with a groom behind. The horses shone like satin, and their harness jingled and glittered in the morning sunshine. The gentleman and his servant were dressed with a brilliant effect of care and detail. The former was smoking a cigarette, and had a scarlet flower in his coat.

As the little funeral procession passed this carriage, the young swell who was driving bared his head, with its smoothly parted blond hair, remaining uncovered until the procession had passed, his servant imitating his act. This little tribute of homage to death which the French take the pains to perform always touched and pleased Martha. She thought of the absurdity of this man’s uncovering his head to that pauper baby alive; but the mystery of death imparted to it a majesty which the equal mystery of life could not. This child was a partaker of the knowledge of the unknown, into which Napoleon, lying near by, had also entered, and was, with him, divided from the merely mortal.

Martha thought of this as she watched the showy carriage, which had relaxed its speed for a moment, whirling rapidly away toward the outskirts of the city. She wondered where that handsome, prosperous-looking, well-bred man was going at this early hour. Probably to fight a duel, she thought, in her romantic way! Perhaps in a few hours’ time he might be as dead as the poor little baby; and perhaps there was some one who loved and adored him as she did Harold!

These were the ideas which filled her mind as she reached the atelier, there to learn that there was a disappointment about the model, who had failed to come.

She was about to take off her wraps, and go to work on some drawings from casts, when an exquisite voice behind her said suddenly, “Pardon, mademoiselle,” and she turned to meet the gaze of the princess fixed upon her with a smile of lovely friendliness.

“What are you going to do?” she said in that faultless French which Martha had already admired.

For a moment the girl was quite overcome at such unexpected graciousness. Then she managed to say in her own faulty though perfectly fluent French, that she had thought she would go on and do what she could without a model.

“It is so dull, after having that glorious Antonio to pose for one,” said the princess. “I am not in the humor, and my carriage is gone. Yours, perhaps, is gone also. Do you feel like drawing to-day? Or do you, perhaps, feel more like calling a cab, and taking a drive with me? I should like it. Will you go?”

Martha crimsoned with pleasure as she accepted the invitation. There was no mistaking her delight at the suggestion.

“You are very good to go,” said the other, “especially as you know nothing of me, I suppose.”

“I know only that you are the princess—the Russian princess,” said Martha.

Her companion frowned slightly, and, Martha thought, looked a little annoyed. She reflected that she ought not, perhaps, to have told her that her secret had been discovered.

The little frown soon passed, however, and the princess smiled genially as she said:

“I am living incognito in Paris to study painting, and I do not go into the world. When I am not working I am often bored, and I frequently long for companionship. You make me very grateful by giving me yours this morning.”

The princess was very tall—so tall that when Martha walked at her side she had to turn her face upward to speak to her. They walked along in the most natural companionship until they reached a cab-stand nearby, and Martha thought her divinity more worshipful than ever as she stood wrapped in her long cloak, with a large, black-plumed hat crowning her beautiful head, and said some words of gentle pity about the poor old, weak-kneed cab-horses drawn up in a line.

When they had entered a cab, and were seated side by side, the princess said abruptly:

“If you had not heard something of me, I should have told you nothing. Why should we ask questions about each other? We meet to-day, art students in a Paris atelier, and we shall part to-morrow. What have we to do with formalities? Of you I know that you are a young American studying painting here, and I think, in a way, sympathetic to me. I am content to know that, and no more, of you. Do you feel the same about me?”

Martha replied eagerly in the affirmative, and in five minutes the two had come to a perfect understanding. The girl felt her awe at being in “the presence” gradually fading away,

“THE PRINCESS WAS VERY TALL.”

as this winning young woman sat and talked with her on a footing of friendly equality. It was after a short silence between them that the princess said:

“There are one or two things that it will be necessary for you to know—that is, if you like me well enough to come to see me, as I hope you do. I am living in the Rue Presbourg, and when you come to see me, you are to ask for the apartment of the Princess Mannernorff. You will come, will you not?”

“Oh, if you will only let me, it will be my greatest happiness!” said Martha. “I can’t understand what has made you so good to me!”

“Simply, I like you. It isn’t hard to understand. I’ve noticed you a long time, and I’ve liked you more and more. I like your manner; I like your face; I like your devotion to your work; and I like your work.”

“My work! My scratching and smudging, you mean! Oh, how can you notice it or care for it when you look at yours? Every one must see that Etienne knows that you are his best pupil. He does not speak to any one as he does to you, and you must know as well as I that it is not because you are a princess.”

“Yes, of course; I know that perfectly well. But I fancy that Etienne, in his little critical heart, feels that he hasn’t got out of me what he looked for at first. At least, I have that idea; and you see I have studied enough, compared with you, to be a great deal further ahead of you than I am. I have digged and delved for that treasure more than you realize. I hope to do something tolerable some day; but I’m not as confident about it as I used to be, and I fear Etienne is not, either. Oh, I wish I could!”

She said this with such fervor, and followed it by such a wistful sigh, that Martha, who had not yet taken in the idea that the princess might not be the all-fortunate creature she imagined, felt a sudden protest against the thought of her wishing for anything vainly.

“Surely you will!” she said. “I can’t imagine your wanting anything very much without getting it.”

The princess laughed, throwing up her chin, and looking at Martha with an indulgent smile.

“You can’t?” she exclaimed. “Well, if you take the trouble to continue my acquaintance, you will find that I’ve missed pretty much everything in life that I very greatly wanted. It is sad, but true.”

Martha did not answer, but she looked as if she would like to speak out something that was on her mind, and her companion saw this, and said:

“What is it? Speak! I give you full permission.”

“It was nothing,” said Martha, rather confusedly. “I was wondering about you—as, of course, I can’t help doing. I don’t want to be told things, however. I would far rather imagine how they are.”

“Very, very sensible. I see that I shall like you more and more. There are a few things, however, which it will be well for you to know. For instance,”—she paused, with a slight look of reluctance, and then went on rapidly,—“no doubt you wonder whether I am married.”

Martha’s eyes confirmed her.

A cloud seemed to have settled with surprising suddenness upon the face of the princess. She looked fixedly at the passing prospect outside the window as, after a moment of difficult silence, she said almost brusquely:

“I am a widow.” Then she turned and looked at Martha. “You will understand, for the future,” she went on more naturally, “my wish for silence on this subject. I am living temporarily in Paris with my aunt. I used to know French society well, but I am out of it now, and I don’t regret it. Painting is the only thing I really care for—that, and music, and some books; some, but not many. Books give such false ideas of life. I think it was what I read in books that led me to expect so much. I was not to be convinced but that all the happiness I imagined was quite possible; and when it would not come to me, I thought there was a force in me which could compel it. As a rule, I’ve given that idea up; but there are times even yet when it rises and conquers me. I know it is very foolish, and that experience cures one of such feelings, but I’m not altogether cured yet, in spite of hard and repeated blows.”

Martha had listened with intense interest, and now, as her companion paused, she felt that she ought to volunteer, on her part, some sort of sketch of herself and her surroundings.

“I don’t care to tell you anything about myself,” she said, “because it’s so uninteresting. My father has been dead a great many years; mama is delicate; and we live in Paris so that I may study painting and the younger girls may have lessons. We go to America for the summers. My brother is the eldest of us, and he lives there. The younger girls are pretty, and mama wishes them to go into society and to be admired. She used also to wish this for me, but she saw how I hated it, and how little chance I had in it, so she lets me alone now, particularly since I got Harold to speak to her.”

“Are you sure that she would not disapprove of your friendship with me, knowing of me only the little that you are able to tell her?”

“Yes; I’m certain of it. She wouldn’t mind. She knows I never get into mischief. I feel perfectly free to do as I choose about this, and I don’t mean to mention you to any one—not because there would be any objection, but because you are too sacred to me, and if you let me be your friend, I can’t share that knowledge and possession with any one.”

Martha was determined to say this, but she did not accomplish it without a good deal of hesitation and embarrassment. Her companion looked at her with a sort of wondering scrutiny.

“Where do you get that earnest, concentrated nature, I wonder—so different from mine!” she said. “Does it go with the American character? Your words are very foolish, child; but it is so long since any one has held me sacred that I am ridiculously touched by it.”

There was something that looked like rising tears in the beautiful eyes of the princess; but a gay little laugh soon banished the shadow from both her face and her voice. Suddenly she sat upright and said:

“Suppose you come home with me now! I want you to learn the ways of the place, so that you may come and go as you please. Will you come with me there to-day?”

Martha agreed at once, and with evident satisfaction the princess leaned out of the window, and gave the address to the cabman.

III

Martha felt herself in a dream of delight as she descended from the cab, and, following the princess into the courtyard of a large apartment-house in the Rue Presbourg, mounted the stairs at her side.

Their ring was answered by a foreign-looking man-servant, to whom the princess spoke in a tongue which Martha recognized as Russian, but of which she understood not a word. She saw, however, that it related to herself; for the servant, who wore a curious and elaborate livery, looked at her and bowed.

“I have been telling him,” explained the princess, “that whenever you come you are to be brought at once to my private sitting-room, whether I am at home to other people or not. If it should chance that I cannot see you,—an unlikely thing, for I generally do what I want, and I shall always want to see you,—my maid can bring you word there. You see, I am not going to take any risk of having you turned away from my door.”

The antechamber into which they had been admitted was charmingly furnished, not at all in the French style; and there was something in the whole environment of the princess which commended itself strongly to Martha’s artistic taste. Everything that she saw, as she passed along, deepened this impression. She followed her companion in excited silence through the antechamber, and into the large and sunny salon, where two persons were sitting.

One was a little old lady with very white hair, elaborately arranged under a queer-looking lace cap fastened with jeweled pins; the other was a dark and severely dressed woman, who, Martha at once saw, was a sort of companion or maid. As the princess approached, this woman rose and courtesied. The old lady looked up, with some surprise in her placid face, and immediately laid down her embroidery, and took up a silver ear-trumpet, holding out her other hand to the princess.

The latter bent, and kissed the proffered fingers lightly, and then, raising her voice a little, uttered several sentences in Russian into the trumpet, at the same time indicating Martha in a way that made her understand that this was an introduction. The girl also bent, and kissed the hand now extended to her, and then the princess led her away.

“My poor aunt is so deaf,” she said, “that it is almost impossible to talk to her, and I could not go into any long explanation about you. She never interferes with me, however, and no questions will be asked. Come now to my own room.”

Martha, following her companion, found herself in a small boudoir opening into a bedroom. The door of the latter was open, and the two apartments gave an impression which she told herself she could best describe by the word lovable. The musical instruments stood open. The lounges and chairs seemed to have taken the shapes of their occupants. Flowers that looked as if they had been willingly plucked were all about in vases. Well-worn volumes and drawing-books were scattered about, and some of the princess’s atelier studies were placed against the walls on the floor. Martha, who could hardly believe in her good fortune in having received even the smallest notice from the princess, was yet more bewildered and delighted when the latter crossed the little boudoir, and led her into the bedroom.

Here the French maid whom Martha had seen at the atelier sat sewing. She stood up, evidently surprised. As she courtesied, and came forward to take her lady’s wraps, the latter hastily threw her cloak to her, and then, striking her hands together with a quick little clap, said:

“Va-t’en, Félicie!”

The maid smiled. She and her mistress evidently understood each other well. Deftly gathering up her work, she left the room, and Martha found herself alone with her divinity, in the privacy of her own bedroom. She felt quite foolishly happy. Perhaps the princess saw it, for she said, with her bewildering smile:

“You like it, do you not? You needn’t explain. I see you do, just as I saw that you liked me, without your saying a word. I am so glad.”

“Like you!” said Martha, protestingly. “Oh!”

Then the princess came and stood in front of the young girl, and put her arms around

“‘IT WILL BE QUITE SAFE, I SEE.’”

her neck, clasping her long hands at the back, and looking down at her.

“It will be quite safe, I see,” she said, still smiling, “for me to make my confession to you, and own that I was drawn to you in quite an extraordinary way. I really did not mean to go so fast, however; and if I had stopped to think, I should probably not have proposed to you to take this drive with me. But for once I am glad that I did not stop to think. My impetuosity is generally my bane in everything. This time I feel that it has brought me a blessing. I can prove to you that it is not my habit to go out to strangers in this way by the fact that I am so friendless. I have no intimate friend in Paris, though I know scores of people here. If I like you, and want to see more of you, and you have the same feeling toward me, why should we not indulge ourselves? Very well! So we will!” and she bent, and kissed Martha on the cheek.

The girl’s heart quivered with joy; but she could find no words in which to express it, so she was quite silent. She felt herself very stupid as she let the princess take off her wraps and hat, and lead her to a seat.

“Now,” said the lovely lady, “as I am one of those people who must be comfortable before they can be happy, I am going to put on a loose gown. No excuses necessary, I know.”

She disappeared for a moment, and came back in an exquisite garment of pale-blue silk with borderings of dark fur. She had seemed to Martha very splendid and beautiful before, but now she was so winning, so sweet, so adorable, that the young girl felt her whole heart glow with delight as, with a long-drawn sigh of ease, the princess threw herself on the lounge at her side.

“Now,” she said, as her hand closed on Martha’s, “talk to me.”

Poor Martha! What could she say? Her gratefulness for this unexpected confidence and friendliness moved her almost to tears, but she was silent.

“Talk to me, Martha,” said the princess, coaxingly. “I may call you that, may I not?”

She called it “Mart’a,” with her pretty foreign utterance; and Martha thought her homely name had suddenly become adorable. But she could not even tell this to the princess. How dull and stupid she was! Her consent must have shown itself in her eyes, however, for the princess went on:

“I can’t call you Martha unless you call me by my name, too. Will you? I have a fancy to hear you say it now. Will you call me by my little Russian name—Sonia?”

It was evident that the girl’s silence did not offend her. She must have understood its basis, for she said, with an encouraging smile:

“Say it. Say ‘Sonia.’”

“Oh, you are too good to me!” exclaimed Martha. “You spoke of knowing that I liked you. I don’t like you—I love you! I don’t love you—I adore you! O Sonia!” and the girl actually slipped from the low chair to her knees beside the lounge.

The princess jumped to her feet, and with strong hands lifted Martha to hers; then holding both the girl’s hands, and stretching her arms apart to their full length, as their two faces were drawn together thus, she kissed Martha with affectionate warmth.

“What a dear thing you are!” she said. “How good it is to see some one who can really feel! How tired one gets of the fin-de-siècle spirit in both women and men! Bless you, my Martha! You have come to be a great joy in my life. I feel that we are going to be friends for always—do you?”

“Oh, if you will let me! If you will only not be disappointed in me! I am afraid to speak, afraid to breathe almost, for fear that you will find out that I am only a poor, commonplace little creature, in whom your goodness has made you see something which does not exist. Oh, I pray I may not disappoint you! And yet how can I dare to hope?”

“Listen, Martha,” said the princess in a matter-of-fact tone, as she drew the other down to a seat beside her on the lounge; “let us take each other quite simply, and not promise anything. We will just agree to be perfectly natural with each other—just to be ourselves. If you continue to like me, and I you, it is all right. If not, we shall have broken no pledges and done each other no wrong. Now, with that basis to go upon, we can both feel natural and satisfied. Only don’t cover up your real self to me, for you may be concealing just what I love, and pretending what I hate. It is because you are different from others that I have been so drawn to you. Now don’t try to be like other people, and ruin everything.”

“Oh, I feel I can be myself with you. I feel I can tell you everything that is in my heart, and talk of things that I have never been able to speak of to others. How beautiful it is! How strange that such a relationship between two women can come about here in Paris in this age of the world!”

“It could not if we were Parisians; but both of us being foreign to this atmosphere, it can. I love your being an American. I felt sure you were even before I asked Etienne.”

“And did he tell you? I have always understood that he never answered questions about his students.”

“So have I; but I asked him all the same, and he told me who you were. I had quite fancied you before, and after that I fancied you still more, as I love the ideal of the American, a creature newer from Nature’s hands, and nearer to her heart, than we of the Old World; and, fortunately or otherwise, I have known too few of your people either to confirm or contradict this idea. So now I think I shall go on liking you. And how is it with you? Do you think you will not be disappointed in me?”

Her beautiful lips widened in a smile of broad amusement that made her eyes twinkle. Martha looked at her with a speechless adoration which she could not have been so dense as to misunderstand.

“How delightful!” said the princess. “It has been so long since I have permitted myself the luxury of a friend that my appetite for one is all the keener.”

She had thrown herself back on the lounge, and as Martha sat down by her, the princess again took her hand, saying as she did so:

“Now I will tell you two things about myself at the outset of our acquaintance: one is that I love to ask questions; the other is that I hate to be questioned. Will you remember these facts, and will you be as frank with me if I do what you don’t like? I am very nearly certain that we shall get on together admirably, for the reason that I know you have no vulgar curiosity about me or my affairs. You have sense enough to be convinced by one look at my aunt, if there were nothing else, that I am respectable. Now I am pretty confident that you have an impulse to talk out freely to me, and to answer any questions that I may choose to put—all the more so because your general habit is one of strict reserve.”

“‘AH, I HAVE MADE A MISTAKE, I SEE.’”

The princess kept her eye on her companion’s face while she was talking, and she could tell by its expression that she had interpreted her correctly. She said so, with a little laugh of contentment, and then added:

“Tell me about yourself first of all.”

Martha’s countenance fell.

“Ah, I have made a mistake, I see,” said the princess. “We have not come to that yet; but we will come to it—you and I. Some of these days you will find yourself telling me all those close-locked secrets of your heart; and yet even they, I fancy, will relate more to others than to yourself. So be it! I can wait. Tell me now about your people—your family here in Paris.”

“Well,” began Martha, “there are mama and we four girls—Alice, Marian, Florence, and I. Alice is very handsome, and poor mama has had to shift over to her and to the younger girls, who also bid fair to be charming, all the hopes which she once centered in me. I have been struggled with for years, and finally let alone. Mama agrees to my working at my painting because she has made up her mind that unless I amount to something in that I shall never amount to anything at all; but I don’t think she has much hope of me. She is not far from beautiful herself, and is accustomed to being admired, and it took her a long time to accept my indifference to it. However, it’s quite accepted now; and I even think that, with three other girls to be taken into society, she finds a certain relief in leaving

“‘ALICE HAS A FINE VOICE.’”

me out of it. The other girls are studying music and languages. Alice has a fine voice.”

“And your father is dead, is he not? Did you not say you had a brother?”

Martha’s face grew quite white with the concentration of mind which this thought produced.

“Yes; I have a brother,” she said.

“Forgive me,” said the princess, with swift sympathy. “There is evidently some reason why it pains you to speak of your brother. Forget that I asked you.”

The blood rushed to Martha’s face as it occurred to her that her companion might misunderstand her reluctance to speak on this subject.

“It’s not that I am not proud of him that it is hard for me to speak,” she said; “it’s expressly because I am. I made up my mind long ago not to talk about Harold. I found I must not, because I could not speak of him with any freedom without saying things that people would think no merely mortal man deserved. I have worshiped him all my life, and, as I’m rather ashamed to own, I’ve had a great many other idols which turned out to be made of clay. This one, however, has never proved for an instant unworthy of my adoration.”

The princess smiled.

“One would like to get a look at him,” she said. “An absolutely faultless being must be interesting to look at.”

“Don’t laugh at me!” cried Martha. “If it were any one but you I could not bear it; but I know you would say or do nothing that could hurt me really. I don’t wish you to understand that I think Harold faultless. He is not. But to one who understands him as I do, his very faults are part of his greatness. They all have their seat in something noble, and to see how he fights to conquer them is a thing that thrills me. He is now off in America hard at work. He has done some quite extraordinary things in electricity, and is absorbed in his career. When I am a little older, and mama gives me up as a hopeless job for society, I am to go and live with Harold, and keep house for him. That is my dream and his.”

“Sooner or later, dear child, you will have to wake from that dream. I do not find it as unlikely as you seem to that you will marry; and even if you should not, your brother probably will.”

The princess was smiling, but her smile faded at the look of tragic pain in her companion’s face. She could see that the young girl had been touched in her heart’s tenderest place.

“No,” she said, with that frown of sadness unrelaxed, “he will never marry.”

“Forgive me again, dear Martha,” said the princess. “Your brother has had some disappointment, about which your heart is as sensitive as his own. I see that, and you need tell me no more. It is good that he has you to comprehend and sympathize with him. It is good that you have each other. If you gave your heart and life to a husband as wholly as you have given them to your brother, he would probably break the heart and wreck the life, and even the right to dream would be taken from you. Living with this brother, whom you love and worship so, whether he deserves it or not, you may have many a sweet and joy-giving dream which no reality would equal. I wish I could make you see how fortunate you are.”

“I care very little for my own happiness,” said Martha, too absorbed to realize that she was saying anything that called for comment. “All that I care for is to give Harold a little comfort and calm. He can never be happy again.”

“He tells you so, dear child, and no doubt he believes it. I tell you it will pass. Men do not grieve perpetually for women. I know them better than you do.”

“You do not know this man. If you imagine that he is like any other man in the world, you are wrong. He could not get over this sorrow and be the man that he is. It is simply a thing impossible to him. Not that he shows it! It has been two years since it happened, and no doubt every one except myself thinks he has recovered. I dare say he wants to have it so, and he’s generally cheerful and bright. Even to me he never says a word, but I think he knows that I understand. At all events, he knows that, though it is the desire of my life to go and live with him, I would never do him the wrong to suppose that I could make him happy.”

“He has, then, it would seem, the same ardent temperament as yours. Dear me! how odd it would be to see a man like that in this

IN THE AMERICAN COLONY.

generation! Was this woman very cruel to him that you resent it so?”

“Resent it!” said Martha, dropping her companion’s hand, to clasp her own hands together. “Even to you I can’t talk about that. I should either cry like a fool or rage like a fury. I know very little about what happened, except that she has utterly ruined Harold’s life, and cut him off from everything that makes life sweet.”

“You allow yourself to suffer too much for him, perhaps,” the princess said. “I am not going to antagonize you at the outset by saying all that I might say to you on this subject, but believe me, my little ingénue, I could give you points about men. I will not do it now, however, and I will even show my willingness to spare you by changing the subject. Tell me about Alice. Is she really so handsome? Does she go into society? Where could one see her?”

“Yes; she goes out a good deal—in the American colony, principally. I don’t think there is any doubt that she’s handsome.”

“Then I’m all the more unfortunate in having no acquaintance in the American colony. Does she look like you?”

“No; the fact is—” Martha blushed, and was in evident confusion, as she went on—“the fact is, I’m considered like Harold. Not really, you know, because no one can deny that he’s magnificent; but there’s said to be a sort of family likeness.”

“Well, I can believe that, my dear, without absolute insult to your brother. Is Alice much admired?”

“Yes, a good deal; but she’s engaged now, and so she is not noticed as much as she was.”

“Oh, she’s engaged, is she? And when is she to be married?”

“The day is not fixed, but it will be before long. The trousseau is being bought now. Her fiancé is an Italian officer of very good family, though not much fortune. Still, Alice is happy, and mama is satisfied, and Harold has given his consent. He is coming over to the wedding. Oh, if you could see him—and he could see you!”

“His seeing me is wholly unnecessary; but the other part might be accomplished. It would be a good idea to give me a card to the wedding if it takes place in a church. Then I could see all your people without their seeing me, and probably disapproving of our intimacy and breaking it up—or else putting it on a footing that would have no comfort in it.”

“How could they disapprove?” said Martha, deeply hurt. “How could they be anything but honored that I should be noticed at all by a great princess like you?”

“Oh, there’s no greatness about this princess, child,” said the other, laughing. “Don’t expect to see me going around with a throne to sit on, in either a literal or a figurative sense. To you I am only Sonia—a fact which you seem to have forgotten, by the way! I wish you’d call me Sonia, and stop thinking about the princess. With your American ideas it, no doubt, seems much more important than it is. Are you going to tell your people about me really or not?”

“No,” said Martha; “I wouldn’t for the world. It may be selfish, but I want you all to myself.”

This was perfectly true; but at the same time, ignore it as she might, there was a lurking feeling in Martha’s heart that the princess was right in imagining that if her mother knew of the friendship that had sprung up between the two students at Etienne’s, she might insist upon investigating the princess—an indignity which Martha felt that she could not endure.

The princess herself seemed pleased at Martha’s evident wish to monopolize her; and the two parted at last with the confidence and affection of old friends.

IV

The days at the atelier had now a new interest for both students, and their work was manifestly the better for it. To Martha these days were filled with a glorious delight, which seemed to give her all that her nature craved; and if it had not been for sad thoughts of her brother and his loneliness, she would have felt that she could ask for nothing.

To have the princess painting near her, and to be able to look up and see her beautiful figure, with its sinuous grace, posed before her easel, and to receive from her now and then a brilliant smile of mutual comprehension, was quite enough of personal bliss for Martha Keene.

Martha had an ardent and romantic temperament, but she seemed to be capable of satisfying its needs vicariously. There undoubtedly are such women, though the like has possibly never existed in the other sex. For instance, it was a continual battle with her now to put down the temptation, which constantly assailed her, of imagining a meeting, an attraction, and finally a union between the brother who realized her romantic ideal of man and the friend who realized his complement in woman’s form. She knew it was impossible. She knew that Harold would never marry; and she even realized that if he could love again, after the manner in which he had loved one woman, he would, by that fact, compel her to lower her standard either of love or of him.

And yet Martha felt that the meeting and blending of these two lives would, if she could have seen it, have satisfied every need of her heart. She believed that her pleasure and contentment in looking on at such a union as this would give her the greatest joy that could be for her—would indeed, in a way, give her the feeling of satisfied love.

It was very hard to put down these imaginings; but she told herself that it must be done. Harold’s life and love had been given once, and she knew he was right in saying that they were not his to give again; and on the princess’s part, no doubt the idea would be a wild suggestion, indeed. Martha did not know what rigid laws of etiquette and convention might not bind the princess; and condescending as the latter had chosen to be with regard to herself, she felt that this beautiful lady would never do anything unworthy of her caste. Her husband, whether she had loved him or not, had no doubt been a great prince, whose name and title the woman on whom he had bestowed them would never consent to debase. The thing was hopeless and wrong, of course, and the idea must be put away from her. But it was hard to do, with her hero constantly in her mind, and her heroine constantly before her eyes.

One day, after an unusually hard morning’s work, the princess invited Martha to go home to lunch with her, and to spend the afternoon at the Louvre, looking together at the pictures which they had so often enjoyed apart.

When they reached the apartment in the Rue Presbourg, the princess was informed that her aunt had already finished her second breakfast, which she took with the regularity of clockwork, not depending upon the comings and goings of the rather erratic person who was the other member of the family. This the princess explained lightly, as she led the way to the dining-room. The servants by this time all knew Martha; and they looked upon her, as the friend of their mistress, with the most amiable glances. Not speaking the Russian language, Martha could show her good will only by a pleasant smile, in return for the evident pleasure which they showed in serving her.

The princess threw her wrap backward over the chair, as she sat at the head of the round table, with her slender figure against a background of dark sable, and her head, in its large plumed hat, standing out from a halo of many-hued old stained-glass in the window behind. Martha, sitting opposite, fell into an unconsciously intent scrutiny of her face.

It was certainly safe, Martha thought, to call this face beautiful, both for feature and character. The eyes were large, dark, brilliant, and fervidly suggestive. One wondered what those eyes had seen, were seeing, and were capable of discovering for others. The hair was a brilliant, waving brown, arranged in a loose mass that was still firm and lovely in its outline—hair, as Martha thought, that

“HER HEAD, IN ITS LARGE PLUMED HAT.”

it must be sweet to touch with fingers and with lips. Also the girl thought one might well long to prove by touch whether that white skin was as smooth and fine as it looked. The firm, short nose was definitely pointed, and tilted upward, slightly lifting with it the short upper lip. Her chin was bewitching—at once strong and alluring. The mouth was very individual, and, as Martha studied it, she concluded that if she could tell why it was so charming, half the charm would be gone. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder how old the princess was.

“You are wondering how old I am!” said the princess, almost taking the girl’s breath away.

“I never knew anything so strange!” exclaimed Martha. “It was the very thought I had in my mind.”

“Certainly, I read it there! I can do that, sometimes, with people who are very sympathetic to me. I fancy it would be rather dangerous for you to do any very private thinking in my presence. I sometimes read, too, without reading aloud. I think I have read some of your thoughts lately, without your suspecting it.”

She looked at Martha, over her cup of bouillon, and smiled. Martha felt herself blushing, as she wondered if that persistent and dominating thought about her brother, which had been so often in her mind of late, could have been perceived by this wonderful being. It frightened her so that she quickly changed the subject, and the remainder of the meal passed in less personal talk.

When they were seated in the princess’s coupé, a little later, driving past the Arc de Triomphe, Martha saw her companion turning her head to look at it with lingering, earnest eyes.

“I always look at the Arc whenever I can,” she said; “and it always has something to say to me. Its expression of strong beauty and repose always makes me feel that what is, is right. If I am happy, it makes me feel that joy is both good and permanent; and even when in times of unhappiness it makes me feel that sadness is permanent, it somehow seems to tell me that that too is good. Did you ever stand quite close to it and look up?”

“No,” said Martha.

“We must, some day, together. It will give you a new sensation.”

“I always thought that it appeared better at a distance,” said Martha.

“So it does, in a way; but the impression is different. I love it from the Place de la Concorde, when the horse-chestnuts are in bloom. Then it looks like a magnificent image of beneficence, stretching out two great arms to take in all those people, in carriages and on foot, who are thronging the Champs-Élysées, its body vague and distant in the clouds. That’s a sufficiently fantastic thought for you, if you like; but it is one that has comforted me. I love Paris. It is the only city that has ever seemed to me to be lovable. Its streets are so gay and clean, and the faces of the people one meets, along here at least, are so good-humored and intelligent. I love this mixture of fashion and ruralness. Look at the swells and the peasants driving side by side! Look at those white-aproned men drawing handcarts, that mail-coach coming alongside, those old peasants in their covered wagons, and that superb mounted policeman with his gorgeous trappings! How friendly and at home they all seem! Even that omnibus, with its three white Percherons abreast, looks sociable and friendly by the side of the steppeurs of the haute école. Oh, it’s all very human and charming; or is it that you humanize me, and make me feel its charm more than I have done for many a day?”

She was still in this delightful humor when they reached the Louvre, and made their way at once to pay their homage to the Venus of Milo. They did not say much as they looked at her, moving slowly from place to place to get the different points of view. Each knew what the other felt, and words seemed out of place. Presently the princess said:

“I have a fancy to try an experiment. Let’s name her! What I mean is, if that were a real woman, what would you think the name best suited to her?”

Martha smiled comprehendingly, and looked at the statue with a gaze of deep concentration. This changed, after a moment, into a smile, as she said:

“I’ve named her. It’s so absurd, however,” she went on, “to give such a name as I’ve chosen to that ancient Greek statue, that I’m almost ashamed to tell it.”

“You needn’t be,” said the princess, smiling too; “for I’ve got a name about which I have exactly the same feeling. Come; I’ll say mine first. It’s Gloriana.”

“And mine is Georgiana! How odd that they should be so much alike!”

“Isn’t it? It’s delightful, though; for it shows that there’s something in my theory of names, and that this statue has made almost exactly the same impression on us. I’m eager now to name the Winged Victory. Come; let’s go and look at her.”

They hurried away to the foot of the wide staircase, where, looking up, they saw the magnificent creature with her great wings spread.

After standing before her in silence a few moments, the princess exclaimed suddenly:

“Oh, have you named her yet? A perfect name for her has come to me!”

“And to me, too—perfect!” said Martha. “How many syllables has yours?”

“One.”

“So has mine!” said the other, breathlessly. “Now let’s count three, and say the name.”

Simultaneously they said: “One, two, three—Ruth!”

Then they looked at each other with an excited delight that the passers-by must have thought rather amazing even for two artists looking at the Victory.

“It’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard of,” said Martha. “Don’t you feel positively creepy?”

“I should think I did! Little cold chills are running all over me. Oh, how nice it is that we can think and feel together in this way!”

Her face, as she spoke, was glowingly beautiful; and Martha returned her gaze with a look which expressed what no words could possibly have done.

V

One morning the princess did not come to the atelier; and Martha, after working along without her for a while, thinking that her friend might have been delayed and hoping that she would come later, found her mind so preoccupied by the absence of her usual companion that her work would not go at all, and at last she concluded to stop trying, and to go to look the princess up.

She called a cab, and drove to the apartment in the Rue Presbourg, where she was now well known. Even the old concierge, with her shining white hair, brilliant black eyes, red cheeks, and bearded upper lip, gave her a smile of welcome as she passed through the court; and the princess’s servant gave her another as he conducted her at once to his mistress’s boudoir.

Here he left her. Martha tapped on the door, and waited. Getting no answer, she turned the knob and entered, intending to knock at the inner door; but no sooner had she shut herself into the room than she became aware, although it was almost wholly darkened, that it was not unoccupied.

A stifled sound reached her ears, and she could now make out the figure of the princess, lying on the lounge, with her face buried in her hands.

The girl’s heart ached with pity, and she did not know whether to yield to her own impulse, and to go forward, or to consult the possible preference of her friend, and go back.

While she hesitated, the princess took her hands from her face, and saw her. As she did so, she started up, touching her eyes with her handkerchief, and clearing her voice to speak.

“Is it you, Martha? Come in, child,” she said. “I have a headache to-day, and intended to see no one. I forgot, however, that I had given orders that you were always to be the exception. I should not have let you see me like this if I had known beforehand; but now that you have looked upon your poor friend in this humiliated state, sit down, and never mind.”

“‘IS IT YOU, MARTHA?’”

Martha had come near, and now took the seat beside the lounge, her face tragic with sympathy.

“I am so sorry you are ill,” was all that she could say.

“I am not ill, really,” said the princess. She was lying back upon the lounge, and fanning her flushed face with her little gossamer handkerchief, which Martha could see was limp with tears. “My head does ache now, but I brought it on by this wretched crying. It’s all my own fault. You did not know that I was such a weakling, did you?” and she made an effort to smile.

“Oh, I am so, so sorry!” said Martha, helplessly.

“You needn’t be, dear. Never be sorry for any man or woman who is equal to his or her life—and I am equal to mine. One time out of ten it gets the better of me, but the nine times I get the better of it. This mood will surely pass. Indeed, it is passing now. You have helped me already. It has been very long indeed since I have found or wanted human help, and it takes me by surprise.”

Martha saw that she was preparing to lead the talk away from her recent tears and their cause, and she passionately wished that her friend should feel that she longed to enter into her sorrow with her, if it could be allowed her; so she said impulsively:

“I don’t suppose you feel like telling me your trouble; but oh, I wish you could!”

“I do feel like it, you darling child! I could talk to you about it better than to any one on earth; but there are some things one cannot speak of even to one’s own heart. That is the trouble now. If I were to let myself indulge freely in imaginings and regrets, I should satisfy the want of the moment, but it would undo me utterly. My great temptation is regret, and I must be strong enough not to regret.”

“Oh, how sad life is!” cried Martha. “I have always thought that you at least ought to be happy. I gave you the name of ‘The Happy Princess,’ out of Tennyson. It has seemed to me from the first that you were a creature who had it in you to command happiness.”

“Ah, dear child, if you could only know how helpless I am there! The best thing that is in me is the power to command courage. That I can, and for the most part do. While that is so, I shall not complain.”

“‘OH, I AM SO, SO SORRY.’”

“Then you are really unhappy? Oh!” said Martha, drawing herself up with an impulsive movement.

“I know what that fervent exclamation means as well as if you had put it into words,” said the princess. “You are wishing that there were some way in which, by sacrificing yourself, you could purchase happiness for me.”

Martha, startled at the correctness of this guess, could say nothing in denial.

“I knew it,” said the princess, reading her face. “I have not the faintest doubt that you would do it; and—now I am going to knock over some of your idealizing of me—there have been moments in my life when my greed for happiness has consumed me so that I believe I would have been willing to take it, and to let another pay the price. That’s a base thing for a woman to say of herself, but so true it is that I thank God I was never tempted when those moods were on me. Something not wholly different from that panting after an impossible joy was upon me this morning. Shall I never get the better of it utterly? Can one overcome it? Did you never have it, Martha? To me joy is impossible, but it is not so to you. Don’t you ever long for it? I will speak to you quite openly, Martha, and tell you this—when I say joy, I mean love. Is there a woman’s heart that does not long for that? Be as honest with me as I have been with you, and tell me.”

“I will try,” said Martha. “I will do my best to be perfectly truthful. I do long for happiness; but—this may seem strange to you, and you may even think that I am pretending to be better or more unselfish than others—”

“That I never will! I know that isn’t so. Go on.”

“I was going to say that the craving of my heart seems somehow to be impersonal. I want happiness intensely, but the way in which I want it is to see the beings whom I love best have it. Now there are two creatures in the world whom I love supremely—my brother and you. You know that this is so. If I could see both of you happy, in the manner and degree that I want, I believe that I could then be perfectly happy, too. I believe all the needs of my own heart could be answered in that way; and indeed I almost think that my greed for joy is as great as yours at times. It has strained my heart almost to bursting, in Harold’s case, and I feel now almost the same about you. I have never spoken of this to any one; indeed, I was never fully aware of it, I think, until I put it into words now. It must seem quite incredible to you.”

“Not in the least. I believe it utterly, or rather it’s a stronger thing than belief with me. I feel that it is true. I admire you for it, and all the more because it is so different from me. I want happiness and love for myself—every ounce of flesh, every drop of blood in me longs for it as well as every aspiration of my soul. It is self that I am thinking of when I get like this—my own power to enjoy, and also—oh, God knows that this is true!—and also the power to give joy to another. Martha, I will tell you something,” she said, with a sudden change of tone, dropping her voice, and leaning forward to take both of Martha’s hands in hers as she spoke, with her eyes fixed intently on the girl’s. “I have known this joy. I have loved supremely, and been loved. You have never tasted that cup of rapture as I have; but then you have never known, as I have, the anguish of that renunciation. Which of us is the fortunate one? If you knew how I suffer you would probably say that it is you; but if, on the other hand, you knew what ecstasy I have had, I think that you might decide differently. Oh, if God would give me one more hour of it, I think I would be content! One more hour, to take it to the full, knowing that I must, after that, come back to what I suffer now! I think those sixty joy-absorbing minutes would make up to me for everything. But to have it never again!”

She broke off, and, hiding her face in her hands, turned away, and lay for some moments quite silent and still. She was not crying—Martha could see that; and when she presently turned, and looked at the young girl, holding out both her hands to her, although there was no smile on her face, it showed that she had conquered her dark mood, and was strong again.

It was a very gentle sort of strength, however, that was not too self-sufficient to feel pleasure in the words and looks and touches of quiet sympathy which Martha gave her now. They sat there, hand in hand, for a long time; and presently the princess said, with her own beautiful smile:

“You have done me a world of good, Martha. My headache is gone, and also its cause. Sometimes, do you know,—I’m going to let you see just how weak I am,—sometimes I succumb for days to a mood like this. Nobody knows that tears have anything to do with the headaches that I suffer from—at least nobody but Félicie, and she gives no information. My aunt loves me dearly, but is no more acquainted with the real me than if I were a stranger; and yet she adores me—perhaps for that reason. I tell her nothing, because the feelings that I have are quite outside her comprehension, while the headaches are quite within it. She recommends various powders and pellets, and is constantly getting new prescriptions for me. She says my headaches are of a very obstinate type, and I agree with her. To show you how completely you’ve cured me,” she added, rising to her feet, with an entire change of tone, “I am going to work this afternoon. You will stay and take your lunch with me, and then we’ll be there in time for the second model’s pose.”

“I can’t stay,” said Martha, rising too; “but I will meet you there promptly. I am keeping my cab below, so that I may be back at the atelier by the time the carriage comes for me. You know how very quiet I am keeping my little escapades with you.”

“Oh, to be sure!” exclaimed the other, smiling. “I had forgotten the necessity of that precaution. What would ‘mama and the girls’ say? I think I shall write them an anonymous letter, saying that if madame had been under the impression that her eldest daughter devoted herself wholly to the pursuit of art during the hours of her absence from home, it might have surprised her had she seen the aforesaid young lady this morning come out of the atelier, call a cab, give a number, go to a distant apartment (where she was evidently well known to the concierge, who passed her on to a servant in Russian livery, who as evidently knew her well), enter, by a special passage, a certain room, where she remained shut in for a long time, emerging finally in great haste to drive rapidly in the cab, which she had kept waiting, back to the atelier in time to meet her own carriage, and come innocently home to join the family circle at lunch! Couldn’t I make out a case? And what would the mother and the little sisters say?”

Martha, too, laughed at the picture; but in spite of some discomfiture of feeling to which it gave rise, she had no idea of changing her tactics. The very thought of her mother’s going to work to investigate the princess, and ascertain if she were a proper friend for her daughter, smote the girl to the heart, and she resolved to guard her secret more carefully than ever. She determined that she would ease her conscience for the deception by confessing everything to her brother when he came. This would make it all right.

As Martha drove back to the atelier, after an affectionate au revoir to the princess, she was conscious that something was rankling in her mind. When she came to search for the ground of this feeling, she found it to exist in the confession of love which the princess had made. This knowledge caused Martha to realize that she had not even yet succeeded in putting from her the imaginings by which she had connected her brother and her friend. Before knowing the princess she had always cherished the belief that her brother would sink below her ideal of him if he ever loved a second time. Lately, however, she had imagined the possibility of his telling her, after knowing the princess, that the old love was not the perfect one he had imagined it; and she could fancy herself forgiving him for loving a second time, with the princess as his apology. It had even seemed to her lately so monstrously wrong and cruel that Harold’s life should be wantonly wrecked that she was now prepared to accept a good deal more than would once have seemed possible, in order to see it mended.

Martha, for all her demure appearance, had something that was more or less savage and lawless in her nature, especially where Harold was concerned; and the same feeling, in a lesser degree, dominated her in regard to the princess. She had long ago admitted to herself the fact that Harold had missed his chance of happiness in love; but it was as painful as it was unexpected to her to find that the princess too had loved before. She had known that she had been married, but with very little difficulty she had constructed for herself a theory of that marriage in which the princess had played the part of an innocent victim to circumstance. For instance, she might have been married by her parents in early youth to a man perhaps far older than herself, whom she had never loved, and for whose death she could not have grieved much.

It was a surprise to Martha now to find how entirely she had let this utterly unfounded idea take possession of her. The words of the princess this morning had shattered it to atoms, and in spite of herself she felt strangely heavy-hearted.

VI

After the morning on which Martha had been by accident a witness of the princess’s self-betrayal, there seemed nothing lacking to the complete understanding of the two friends, and their intimacy was now stronger and closer than ever. It was not practicable for Martha to visit the princess very often, as she was compelled to take the time for these visits out of her atelier hours, and both women were too earnest in their work not to begrudge this. Lately they had fallen into the custom of the generality of the students, and went for their midday meal to the crèmerie in the neighborhood, after they had visited first the butcher’s shop, and selected their own mutton-chop or bit of beefsteak; then they had it cooked according to their directions. This, with fresh rolls and baked apples and milk, made an excellent meal, sometimes augmented by potato salad. Martha had been initiated into these mysteries by an American girl whose acquaintance she had made through the latter’s having once offered to help her on with her “josie,” a word which had established an easy footing between them at once.

Martha never exchanged more than a passing remark with the other students, partly because she had, in the beginning, built a sort of barrier around her by her shyness, and, recently, because she felt that her intimacy with the princess, who knew none of the others, set her more than ever apart.

One morning Martha came to the atelier rather late, and showed, moreover, a certain excitement in her movements and expression which she accounted for at lunch-time by telling the princess that her sister’s wedding had been hurried up, and was to take place almost immediately.

There were several good reasons for this; one being that it suited much better the plans of the bridegroom elect, and another that Mrs. Keene, being in rather delicate health, had been urged by her physicians to leave Paris. So, as soon as the wedding was over, she was to go south with the younger girls and their governess; and Martha, who rebelled against being taken from her beloved painting, had a beautiful plan of getting her brother to stay awhile in Paris with her in their mother’s apartment. This she confided to the princess with breathless delight, saying that she had written to Harold about it, and told him to cable her if he were willing. Her friend could see that, with her usual license of imagination, Martha had been making all sorts of plans in connection with this scheme, and she more than suspected that some of these concerned herself.

“My dear Martha,” she said, with a penetrating look into her friend’s eager eyes, “give it up at once, on the spot, if you have been making any plans to introduce your brother to me!”

“Oh, why?” said Martha, in tones of the keenest regret.

“Because, my dear, it is out of the question. If you knew how sick to death I am of men, you would not ask it. Please, if you love me, don’t speak of it again.”

This, of course, was final, and Martha was compelled to bear her disappointment with what patience she could summon. She got a promise from the princess, however, that she would come to the wedding, which was to take place in the American church. At least this would give her the satisfaction of feeling in the future that her friend had seen her brother, and she hoped she might contrive in some way that the latter should see the princess, since it was now decreed that the intercourse could go no further.

Great as Martha’s disappointment was, she forced herself to recognize the fact that, as things were, it might be all for the best that these two should not meet. She could imagine but one result of that meeting, and that, under existing circumstances, might be disastrous to both. Neither of them had fully confided in her, but both of them had told her plainly that a second love was the thing which they most strongly repudiated. In Harold’s case, she knew that this feeling was one that his conscience, no less than his heart, ordained; and in the case of the princess, she somehow felt that it was the same.

The princess, for some reason, did not tell Martha what a notable exception to her rule she made in going to this wedding. The fact was, she had never been to any wedding since her own; and it may have been that fact which accounted for the state of intense excitement which she was in as she drove alone in her carriage through the streets of Paris to the church in the Avenue de l’Alma.

As she got out, and instructed her coachman where to wait, this inward excitement showed in every rapid movement and word. Afterward, when she entered the church, and walked, with a definiteness of manner which would seem to have indicated a prearranged plan, straight down the left-hand aisle to the choir-stalls, her face was flushed and her eyes were brilliant. It was early, and few people had come as yet.

The princess wore a long, dark cloak, which concealed her figure, and on her large hat, which hid the outline of her head, a rather thick Russian veil was fastened, so that her features were scarcely distinguishable.

There was a shaded corner near the organ, behind the chorister-stalls, that was quite screened from the congregation, and so situated as to be almost out of view from the chancel also, if one chose to protect one’s self behind the great pillar that stood there. The day was dark and cloudy, but the chancel was brilliant with lighted candles. The princess with firm confidence walked to this place, and took her seat. She did not seem to care whether the church was filling up or not. She scarcely noticed when some people came and took the seats near her. In these moments she was so lost in thoughts and reminiscences that the furious beating of her heart almost suffocated her.

When, from just behind her, a great organ-note swelled forth, and filled the church with tremulous vibrations, the princess gave a little fluttered start. No one was near enough to observe this, however, or to see the crouching back into her seat which followed it. The music seemed to heighten her emotion, and she trembled visibly. She quite lost count of time, and did not know how long it was before she saw a clergyman enter the chancel and stand there, waiting. Then, as two officers in rich uniforms came and took their places in front of him, the sonorous chords of the old familiar Mendelssohn march swelled from the organ, and the heart within her seemed to stop and sink. It was the sound and influence to which, in perfect joy, she had walked to her own wedding.

She knew that the bridal procession was coming up the aisle, but she did not turn her head to get a view into the church. She felt the people about her rise to their feet, but she sat still. Her trembling limbs would not have held her up; but she did not even know that she was trembling. She knew only that she was waiting—that all her heart and all her soul were wrapped in a bewildering suspense until the coming of what was very near her now. They passed close to her, the girls in their white dresses, and the officers in their glittering uniforms, and stood in divided ranks, leaving the space between them clear.

Into this space, directly in front of the clergyman, there now advanced a woman covered with a cloud of gauzy tulle. She leaned upon the arm of the only man in the party who was not in uniform.

It was on this figure that the princess fastened her eyes, never once removing them until the short ceremony had come to an end. The bride was a shapeless blur. The bridesmaids were a billowy cloud. The officers were mere dazzles of color and gold lace. One object there was that cut its way into her consciousness with acute distinctness—the dark-clad,

“THE MAN WHO STOOD WAITING TO GIVE THE BRIDE.”

clearly outlined figure and pale profile of the man who stood waiting to give the bride.

When the music ceased, and the minister told the congregation that they were assembled to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, it was another man and woman that she thought of; and so through all the solemn charge and searching questioning that followed.

When the minister asked, “Who giveth this woman to be married?” and the man that she had been watching gave up his companion with a slight inclination of the head, and moved aside, the gaze of the princess still followed and rested on him. When, a moment later, a strange foreign voice said painstakingly, “I, Victor, take thee, Alice, to my wedded wife,” what she heard, in natural and familiar English utterance was this: “I, Harold, take thee, Sophia, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I plight thee my troth.” And it was her own voice which made answer: “I, Sophia, take thee, Harold.”

A hard clutch was on her heart. He was there—the Harold who had made that vow to her; and she, Sophia, was here, in life, not death! “Till death us do part,” they had both of them sworn, and they had let life part them! The terrible wrong of it all rushed over her. The reasons which had made that parting seem to her right before now vanished into air. She felt that crime alone could ever link one of them to another. She felt that this separation between them was in itself a crime, and she who had done it the chief of criminals.

All this she felt with terrifying force, but a feeling stronger than even any of these had taken possession of her—a want and longing had awakened in her heart which strained it almost intolerably. She looked at the bride’s brother, standing there intensely still, in an attitude of complete repose, and a feeling that he was hers, and hers alone took possession of her. She grew reckless of appearances, and stood up in her place, with her face turned full toward him. She heard the clergyman’s stern behest that man put not asunder those whom God hath joined, and she heard him pronounce that they were man and wife, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Her heart said a solemn amen.

Imagination lingered on these thrilling thoughts while the blessing was pronounced and the service ended; and then the little procession, the bride and bridegroom at its head, and the figure that she watched at his mother’s side behind them, passed her and went down the aisle, while the familiar music was playing, to which she had walked from the altar a blissfully happy wife—and she was left alone!