vision he
sees arise that city of the future which we know now as San Francisco.
Masterful man that he is, he feels that here some great thing awaits
him. The Spaniards are wary of him. They will not trade with him, but
they receive him courteously and they are fascinated by his
self-possessed, well-poised but withal so gracious personality. The
life there at the time is a sort of lotus-eating existence. It is a
piece of Spain translated to a more luscious, a lovelier land,
overlooking beautiful seas and perilous. Into the dolce far niente
Rezanov enters with some surrender to its softening spell, but with the
courtier's prudence.

And he meets the girl, Concha Arguello. He sees her in the setting of
burning and sweet Castilian roses--a girl who has had the benefit of
education, who keeps the graces of old Madrid in this realm beyond sea,
a burgeoning bud of womanhood, daughter of the commandante. The doom
of both is upon them at once. They have drunk the poisoned cup.
Rezanov resists the first approaches of the delightful delirium,
remembering Russia, his duty, his ambition, the poor starving men of
the Sitka factory. At a party he dances with Concha and they both know
that for each there is none other. So in that setting so wild, so
strange, so remote, so lovely for the old world grace that is made
native there by this bright, deep, fond girl, the high gods proceed to
have their will upon the two. The little community life pulses around
them the faster because they are there. Their love becomes a motive in
the diplomatic drama which has for end, first, the securing of food for
those famishing folk at Sitka, and beyond that, possibly the seizing of
the region for Russia, lest that new young power of the West, the
United States, preempt the rich domain. Concha would help the Russian
to those ends immediate which he reveals to her, and succeeds. He
tells her of Russia and his mighty position there. He would have her
for his wife, his helper in the vast imperial affairs at the Russian
capitol, his princess in his palace, augmenting his official and
personal distinction. She shares his vision, rising to all the heights
it unfolds in a splendid future. Child she is, but she is transformed
into a woman by the prospect not of her own pleasure, but of
participation in splendid achievement with this man so keen, so supple,
yet so firm in high purpose. And as the prospect opens to her desire
and his there loo