oses? Yes, they'll sit at
your feet, but their own enjoyment or mental development is all
they're thinking of. These Russian girls are the most dreadful. I know
hundreds like your Sophie. They're a typical development of our
new-fangled age. They even take nominal husbands, merely to emancipate
themselves from the parental roof. I wonder she didn't play you that
trick. And now she's older and has got over her pique, she sees what
she has lost. But you will not be drawn in again?"

"No; you may rely on that," said Lassalle.

Her face became almost young.

"You are so ignorant of woman, _mon cher enfant_," she said, smoothing
his brown curly hair; "you are really an infant, without judgment or
reason where they are concerned."

"And you are so ignorant of man," thought Lassalle, for his
repudiation of the Russian girl had brought up vividly the vision of
his enchanting Brunehild. Did the Countess then think that a man could
feed for ever on memories? True, she had gracefully declined into a
quasi-maternal position, but a true mother would have felt more
strongly that the relation was not so sufficing to him as to her.

The Countess seemed to divine what was passing through his mind. "If
you could get a wife worthy of you," she cried. "A brain to match
yours, a soul to feel yours, a heart to echo the drum-beat of yours, a
mate for your dungeon or your throne, ready for either--but where is
this paragon?"

"You are right," cried Lassalle, subtly gratified. After all Helene
was a child with a child's will, broken by the first obstacle. "Never
have I met a woman I could really feel my mate. If ever I have kindled
a soul in one, it has been for a moment. No, I have always known I
must live and die alone. I have told you of my early love for the
beautiful Rosalie Zander, my old comrade's sister, who still lives
unmarried for love of me. But I knew that to marry her would mean
crippling myself through my tenderness. Alone I can suffer all, but
how drag a weaker than myself into the tragic circle of my destinies?
No, Curtius must leap into his gulf alone."

His words soothed her, but had a sting in them.

"But your happiness must be before all," she said, not without meaning
it. "Only convince me that you have found your equal, and she shall be
yours in the twinkling of an eye. I shouldn't even allow love-letters
to intervene--you are so colossal. Your Titanic emotions overflow
into hundreds of pages. You are the most u