k being suspected, he dressed himself in new and rich garments, and
hurried away towards the Smolnoi. The old nurse, Katinka, in her scarlet
gown, opened the door for him, and was the first to say, "Christ is
arisen!" What could he do but give her the usual kiss? Formerly he had
kissed hundreds of serfs, men and women, on the sacred anniversary, with
a passive good-will. But Katinka's kiss seemed bitter, and he secretly
rubbed his mouth after it. The music-master came next: grisly though
he might be, he was the St. Peter who stood at the gate of heaven. Then
entered Helena, in white, like an angel. He took her hand, pronounced
the Easter greeting, and scarcely waited for the answer, "Truly he has
arisen!" before his lips found the way to hers. For a second they warmly
trembled and glowed together; and in another second some new and sweet
and subtle relation seemed to be established between their natures.

That night Prince Boris wrote a long letter to his "chere maman," in
piquantly misspelt French, giving her the gossip of the court, and such
family news as she usually craved. The purport of the letter, however,
was only disclosed in the final paragraph, and then in so negative a way
that it is doubtful whether the Princess Martha fully understood it.

"Poing de mariajes pour moix!" he wrote,--but we will drop the
original,--"I don't think of such a thing yet. Pashkoff dropped a hint,
the other day, but I kept my eyes shut. Perhaps you remember her?--fat,
thick lips, and crooked teeth. Natalie D---- said to me, 'Have you ever
been in love, Prince?" HAVE I, MAMAN? I did not know what answer to
make. What is love? How does one feel, when one has it? They laugh at it
here, and of course I should not wish to do what is laughable. Give me a
hint: forewarned is forearmed, you know,'"--etc., etc.

Perhaps the Princess Martha DID suspect something; perhaps some word
in her son's letter touched a secret spot far back in her memory, and
renewed a dim, if not very intelligible, pain. She answered his question
at length, in the style of the popular French romances of that day. She
had much to say of dew and roses, turtledoves and the arrows of Cupid.

"Ask thyself," she wrote, "whether felicity comes with her presence,
and distraction with her absence,--whether her eyes make the morning
brighter for thee, and her tears fall upon thy heart like molten
lava,--whether heaven would be black and dismal without her company, and
the fl