was natural
enough; with his conspicuous rank, he could only
venture to be unguarded in his attentions to those
for whom he had no presentiment of future intimacy.

That the progress of this acquaintance should
assume for me the interest of a drama--a scene of
it played every night, with interludes every day,
in public drives and excursions--would not be
wonderful to you, could I have drawn the portrait
of the principal performer in it, so that you would
understand its novelty. I had never seen such a
woman, and I was intensely interested to know how
she would bear temptation. The peculiar character
of the prince I easily understood; and I felt at
once, that of all stages of an accomplished man's
progress, he was at the one most dangerous to her,
while, perhaps, no other kind of woman in the world
would have called upon any but very practiced
feelings of his own. He was of middle age, and had
intellect enough to have long anticipated the ebb
of pleasure. With his faculties and perceptions in
full force, he was most fastidious in permitting
himself to enjoy an enthusiasm, to admire, to yield
to, or to embark upon with risk. The admiration of
mere beauty, mere style, mere wit, mere superiority
of intellect in woman, or of any of these combined,
was but a recurrent phase of artificial life. He
had been to the terminus, the farthest human
capability of enjoyment of this, and was now back
again to nature, with his keenest relish in
reserve, looking for such outdoings of art as
nature sometimes shows in her caprices. In the
Countess ---- he recognized at once a rare miracle
of this--a woman whose beauty, whose style, whose
intellect, whose pride, were all abundant, but,
abundant as they were, still all subservient to
electric and tumultuous _sensation_. Her life, her
impulse--the consciousness with which she
breathed--was the one gift given her by Heaven in
tenfold measure, and her impression on those she
expanded to, was like the magnetizing presence of
ten full existences poured into one. The heart
acknowledged it before her--though the reason kn