onstituted the ideal of a man;
but she was barely twenty, and had seen little of those things. She
recognized their importance, and desired to understand them; she felt
that wonderful suspicion of possibilities which a young girl loves to
dwell on in connection with every exceptional man she meets; she
unconsciously said to herself that such a man as Patoff might possibly
be her ideal, because there was nothing apparent to her at first sight
which was in direct contradiction with the typical picture she had
conceived of the typical man she hoped to meet.

Every young girl has an ideal, I presume. If it be possible to reason
about so unreasonable a thing as love, I should say that love at first
sight is probably due to the sudden supposed realization in every
respect of an ideal long cherished and carefully developed in the
imagination. But in most cases a young girl sees one man after another,
hopes in each one to find those qualities which she has elected to
admire, and finally submits to be satisfied with far less than she had
at first supposed could satisfy her. As for young men, they are mostly
fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery,
laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it
is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day
the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences
a new sensation, and becomes a very sick man indeed before he is out of
sight of Dover cliffs.

But with Hermione there was certainly no realization of her ideal, but
probably only the faint, unformulated hope that in her cousin Paul she
might find some of those qualities which her own many-sided nature
longed to find in man.

"You must tell us all about Russia, cousin Paul," she said, when her
father and mother were gone. "Aunt Chrysophrasia believes that you are
the most extraordinary set of barbarians up there, and she adores
barbarians, you know."

"Of course we are rather barbarous."

"Hermione! How can you say I ever said such a thing!" interposed Miss
Dabstreak, with a deprecating glance at Paul. "I only said the Russians
were such a young and manly race, so interesting, so unlike the
inhabitants of this dreary den of printing-presses and steam-engines,
so"----

"Thanks, aunt Chrysophrasia," said Paul, "for the delightful ideal you
have formed of us. We are certainly less civilized than you, and
perhaps, as you are so good as to be