rt I know you feel what it means to be offered the
love of a man who doesn't want you just because you are of his order, or
because you are the daughter of a Personage, or for any other reason
than because he cares for you as he has cared for no other woman on
earth, and because, without knowing it, he has waited for you."

She moved restlessly in her chair. Their conversation was not going in
the least along the lines which she had intended. She suddenly
remembered her own disquiet of the day before, her curious longing to
steal off on some excuse to-day. A week ago she would have been content
to have dawdled away the afternoon in the grounds of the villa.
Something different had come. From the moment she had entered the rooms,
although she had never acknowledged it, she had been conscious,
pleasurably conscious of his presence. She was suddenly uneasy.

"I am afraid," she murmured, "that you are quite hopeless."

"If you mean that I am without hope, you are wrong," he answered
sturdily. "From the moment I met you I have had but one thought, and
until the last day of my life I shall have but one thought, and that
thought is of you. There may be no end of difficulties, but I come of an
obstinate race. I have patience as well as other things."

She was avoiding looking at him now. She looked instead at her clasped
hands.

"I wish I could make you understand," she said, in a low tone, "how
impossible all this is. In England and America I know that it is
different. There, marriages of a certain sort are freely made between
different classes. But in Russia these things are not thought of.
Supposing that all you said were true. Supposing, even, that I had the
slightest disposition to listen to you. Do you realise that there isn't
one of my family who wouldn't cry out in horror at the thought of my
marrying--forgive me--marrying a commoner of your rank in life?"

"They can cry themselves hoarse, as they'll have to some day," he
replied cheerfully. "As for you, Miss Fedora--you don't mind my calling
you Miss Fedora, do you?--you'll be glad some day that you were born at
the beginning of a new era. You may be a pioneer in the new ways, but
you may take my word for it that you won't be the last. Please have
courage. Please try and be yourself, won't you?"

"But how do you know what I am?" she protested. "Or even what I am like?
We have spoken only a few words. Nothing has passed between us which
could possibly have inspir