on the crest of the wave, of many colours from many distant
depths, to intermingle for a time in the motion of the waters, to part
company under the driving of the north wind, to be drifted at last,
forgetful of each other, by tides and currents which wash the opposite
ends of the earth. This is the life of the emigrant, of the exile, of the
wanderer among men; the incongruous elements meet, have brief acquaintance
and part, not to meet again. Who shall count the faces that the exile has
known, the voices that have been familiar in his ear, the hands that have
pressed his? In every land and in every city, he has met and talked with a
score, with scores, with hundreds of men and women all leading the more or
less mysterious and uncertain life which has become his own by necessity
or by choice. If he be an honest man and poor, a dozen trades have
occupied his fingers in half a dozen capitals; if he be dishonest, a
hundred forms and varieties of money-bringing dishonesty are sheathed like
arrows in his quiver, to be shot unawares into the crowd of well-to-do and
unsuspecting citizens on the borders of whose respectable society the
adventurer warily picks his path.

It is rarely that two persons meet under such circumstances between whom
the bond of a real sympathy exists and can develop into lasting friendship
between man and man, or into true love between man and woman. When both
feel themselves approaching such a point, they are also unconsciously
returning to civilisation, and with the civilising influence arises the
desire to ask the fatal question, "Whence art thou?"--or the fear lest the
other may ask it, and the anxiety to find an answer where there is none
that will bear scrutiny.

It was therefore natural that the Count should feel disturbed at what he
had done, in spite of his sincere and honourable wish to abide by his
proposal and to make Vjera his wife. He felt that in returning to his own
position in the world he owed it in a measure to himself to wed with a
maiden of whom he could at least say that she came of honest people.
Always centred in his own alternating hopes and fears, and conscious of
little in the lives of others, it seemed to him that a great difficulty
had suddenly revealed itself to his apprehensions. At the same time, by a
self-contradiction familiar to such natures as his, he felt himself more
and more strongly drawn to the girl, and more and more strictly bound in
honour to marry her. As h