pastimes of youth without effort. But
you are thirty-five. We know it. We who look at you can see it for
ourselves, and, if you could only be brought to believe it, we think no
worse of you on that account.

The man who rode beside Karl Steinmetz with gloomy eyes and a vague
suggestion of flight in his whole demeanor was, like reader and writer,
exactly what he seemed. He was the product of an English public school
and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of
athletic exercise. He had little education and highly developed
muscles--that is to say, he was no scholar but essentially a
gentleman--a good enough education in its way, and long may Britons seek
it!

This young man's name was Paul Howard Alexis, and Fortune had made him a
Russian prince. If, however, anyone, even Steinmetz, called him prince,
he blushed and became confused. This terrible title had brooded over him
while at Eton and Cambridge. But no one had found him out; he remained
Paul Howard Alexis so far as England and his friends were concerned. In
Russia, however, he was known (by name only, for he avoided Slavonic
society) as Prince Pavlo Alexis. This plain was his; half the Government
of Tver was his; the great Volga rolled through his possessions; sixty
miles behind him a grim stone castle bore his name, and a tract of land
as vast as Yorkshire was peopled by humble-minded persons who cringed at
the mention of his Excellency.

All this because thirty years earlier a certain Princess Natasha Alexis
had fallen in love with plain Mr. Howard of the British Embassy in St.
Petersburg. With Slavonic enthusiasm (for the Russian is the most
romantic race on earth) she informed Mr. Howard of the fact, and duly
married him. Both these persons were now dead, and Paul Howard Alexis
owed it to his mother's influence in high regions that the
responsibilities of princedom were his. At the time when this title was
accorded to him he had no say in the matter. Indeed, he had little say
in any matters except meals, which he still took in liquid form. Certain
it is, however, that he failed to appreciate his honors as soon as he
grew up to a proper comprehension of them.

Equally certain is it that he entirely failed to recognize the
enviability of his position as he rode across the plains of Tver toward
the yellow Volga by the side of Karl Steinmetz.

"This is great nonsense," he said suddenly. "I feel like a Nihilist or
some theatrical person