rawn from this, and
crouched on a little tabouret, leaning forward to rest her elbows on a
chair in front of her, her chin propped upon her palms. The silence was
absolute. The light of lamp and fire mingled and cast flickering shadows
and fingers of light into the dark recesses of the antechamber. The air
was tainted with the smell of iodine, carbolic, and various antiseptics;
but the door leading into the Princess' bedroom was closed, and the
portiere also drawn across it. Young Tremont, whose thoughts had
wandered from his reading, guessed rightly that Ivan's mind was fixed on
what was passing beyond that door. Of the meditations of the girl, the
daughter of his patient, who had arrived in the afternoon in the company
of the priest now absolving the Princess, he was not so sure. And, as he
thought, he began unconsciously to study her slender figure and
half-hidden face.

How beautiful--how _very_ beautiful--she was! Ah! _Was_ it beauty? Was
it not rather a kind of _chic diablerie_, that is so much more
attractive, so much more dangerous, than mere perfection of feature and
proportion?--Good Heavens! What a destiny, too, for such a personality!
The mother dying; the father long since lost in the dreary throng of
forgotten failures; not a relation in the world who could possibly
acknowledge her left-handed relationship to one of the most powerful
families in Europe:--what was left her but the veil? Instinctively he
perceived that she must be intended for this. And yet, to put _that_
creature into a convent! Set the Venus de Milo in a cathedral
crypt!--What sort of nun would she make, this child of temperament and
unholy passion? _Could_ they manage to keep her consecrated to the hush
of prayer, the eventless, endless routine of the mechanical religion of
her order?

Again and again these thoughts revolved through the young man's brain;
but he did not note that Ivan's gaze was fixed on Vittoria with the same
expression; that his own thoughts were echoed in Gregoriev's mind. Ivan,
indeed, was undergoing rather a startling dream, or hallucination, or
waking-vision:--call it what one might.

Up around him, blotting out all the room save the little space where
Vittoria sat, there rose a silvery white mist wherein she was framed.
Then, gradually, her seated form faded from sight and reappeared again,
changed in costume, and in attitude. And again she faded and reappeared,
and again, and yet once more. He saw her in many p