being unmarried. Beautiful and attractive women,
of good family--if they were rich--did not wander over the Continent
long without husbands. Well--that mattered nothing. Thank heaven, he
was not bound by any necessity of fortune.

Before he switched off his light that night Paul took from one of his
boxes a small flat object of red morocco inlaid with gold. He lifted a
tiny lid and there, through wide-set and strangely fascinating eyes a
lady looked at him. It was the most amazing miniature Paul had ever
seen. And the face depicted there with some unknown master's
consummate skill--how often had it proved for him the only consolation
he could find in the whole world.

His eyes dimmed as they conveyed to him the image of his still beloved
_Imperatorskoye_--he pressed the bauble to his lips. Ah! God! the cold
glass! How different from her melting kiss!

Not easily did he control his emotions. Of late years he seldom opened
the portrait because of the almost overwhelming rush of memories it
always brought to him.

"There is a strange resemblance," he mused, after he had carried the
miniature where the light shone full upon it. Was it the strong
predominance of the Russian type which stamped alike the features of
his dead Queen and the living lady he had seen that evening? Paul
could not tell. He closed the case reluctantly. Never had he expected
to see another comparable to his long lost love. Well, he was
drifting, perhaps. Who knew?

And yet he felt again, as his hand rested upon the precious casket,
that _she_ in her wisdom must be cognizant of it all. Indeed, Paul had
gone through the years of his manhood with a feeling that her presence
was always near to him. The conviction that had come to him as he had
stood in the Cathedral at Langres was too strong to be shaken off.
Whatever happened--and Paul meant to win the woman he had that night
left in the _Faubourg St. Germain_--he felt sure his Queen had willed
it.

Such is the inexplicable influence that the dead sometimes exert. I
will not try to tell you more of that now. It would take too long. And
I should first have to tell you about many sad things that happened a
score of years ago, if you do not know them already. And then I might
become melancholy. It is my pleasure instead to tell another story
altogether, which is joyful and appropriate. And it is this very story
which I mean to tell in this book.

CHAPTER XVI

When Paul rang the bell at the