know it well--I, so little."

Rezanov felt his breath short and his hands cold.
For a moment he made no reply. Then he smiled
charmingly and said in the conventional tone that
was ever at his command: "Of course you know
little of life in this Arcadia. One who hopes to be
numbered among the best of your friends prays
that you never may. Yes, senorita, life is strange
--strangely commonplace and disillusionizing--but
sometimes picturesque. Believe me when I say that
nothing stranger has ever befallen me than to find
out here on the lonely brink of a continent nearly
twenty thousand versts from Europe, a girl of six-
teen with the grand manner, and an intellect with-
out the detestable idiosyncrasies of the fashionable
bas bleus I have hitherto had the misfortune to en-
counter."

She was tapping the table slowly with her fork,
and he noted that her soft, childish mouth was set.
"No doubt you are quite right to put me off," she
said finally, and in a voice as even as his own. "And
my intellect would do me little good if it did not
teach me to ignore mysteries I can never hope to
fathom. There is no such thing as life in your sense
in this forgotten corner of the world, nor ever will
be in my time. If you come back and visit us
twenty years hence you will find me fat and worn
like Elena, and busy every minute like my mother