t. The music-master came next: grisly though he
might be, he was the St. Peter who stood at the gate of heaven. Then
entered Helena, in white, like an angel. He took her hand, pronounced
the Easter greeting, and scarcely waited for the answer, "Truly he is
arisen!" before his lips found the way to hers. For a second they warmly
trembled and glowed together; and in another second some new and sweet
and subtile relation seemed to be established between their natures.

That night Prince Boris wrote a long letter to his "_chere maman_," in
piquantly misspelt French, giving her the gossip of the court, and such
family news as she usually craved. The purport of the letter, however,
was only disclosed in the final paragraph, and then in so negative a way
that it is doubtful whether the Princess Martha fully understood it.

"_Poing de mariajes pour moix!_" he wrote,--but we will drop the
original,--"I don't think of such a thing yet. Pashkoff dropped a hint
the other day, but I kept my eyes shut. Perhaps you remember her?--fat,
thick lips, and crooked teeth. Natalie D---- said to me, 'Have you ever
been in love, Prince?' _Have I, maman?_ I did not know what answer to
make. What is love? How does one feel, when one has it? They laugh at it
here, and of course I should not wish to do what is laughable. Give me
a hint: forewarned is forearmed, you know,"--etc., etc.

Perhaps the Princess Martha _did_ something; perhaps some word in her
son's letter touched a secret spot far back in her memory, and renewed a
dim, if not very intelligible, pain. She answered his question at
length, in the style of the popular French romances of that day. She had
much to say of dew and roses, turtle-doves and the arrows of Cupid.

"Ask thyself," she wrote, "whether felicity comes with her presence, and
distraction with her absence,--whether her eyes make the morning
brighter for thee, and her tears fall upon thy heart like molten
lava,--whether heaven would be black and dismal without her company, and
the flames of hell turn into roses under her feet."

It was very evident that the good Princess Martha had never felt--nay,
did not comprehend--a passion such as she described.

Prince Boris, however, whose veneration for his mother was unbounded,
took her words literally, and applied the questions to himself. Although
he found it difficult, in good faith and sincerity, to answer all of
them affirmatively, (he was puzzled, for instance, to know the