anie, drawing away her hand, yet
not very quickly after all. "There is much yet to say to you, and I
have been wondering how to say it, but I shall do it now. Like the
heroes in the novels," she smiled again, "I am going to tell you the
story of my life."

"Good!" said Aleck. "All ready for chapter one. But your maid wants
you at the door."

"Go away, Sophie," said Melanie. "Serve luncheon to Madame Reynier
alone. I shall wait; and you'll have to wait, too, poor man!" She
looked scrutinizingly at Aleck. "Or are you, perhaps, hungry? I'm not
going to talk to a hungry man," she announced.

"Not a bite till I've heard chapter thirty-nine!" said Aleck.

In a moment she became serious again.

"I have lived in England and here in America," she began, "long enough
to understand that the differences between your people and mine are
more than the differences of language and climate; they are ingrained
in our habits of thought, our education, our judgments of life and of
people. My childhood and youth were wholly different from yours, or
from what an American girl's could be; and yet I think I understand
your American women, though I suppose I am not in the least like them.

"But I, on the other hand, have seen the dark side of life, and
particularly of marriage. When I was a child I was more important in
my own country than I am now, since it seemed then that my father would
succeed to the throne. I was brought up to feel that I was not a
woman, but a pawn in the game of politics. When I had been out of the
convent for a year or more, I loved a youth, and was loved in return,
but our marriage was laughed at, put aside, declared impossible,
because he was of a rank inferior to my own. My lover disappeared, I
know not where or how. Then affairs changed. My father died, and it
transpired that I had been officially betrothed since childhood to Duke
Stephen's brother, the Count Lorenzo. The duke was my guardian, and
there was no one else to whom I could appeal; but the very week set for
the wedding I faced the duke and declared I would never marry the
count. His Highness raged and stormed, but I told him a few things I
knew about his brother, and I made him see that I was in earnest. The
next day I left Krolvetz, and the duke gave out that I was ill and had
gone to a health resort; that the wedding was postponed. I went to
France and hid myself with my aunt, took one of my own middle names and
her surname,