h her in his arms--"do you know that wonderful country? Those
fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests--their
rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the
beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I
could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some
peasant's hut, if need be."

"Tell me more!" Paul leaned toward her, forgetful now of all else but
this divine and fascinating being.

"Ah!" she breathed, "you are a devotee of Nature, too, I know. You are
a great traveller,--the Countess has said it," she continued quaintly.
"You have been around the whole world. While as for me, I know Europe
only, and of course Russia best of all countries. I have seen much of
her--those wonderful rolling _steppes_, and rugged mountains. The
North Sea, too, for I love the sea as my own soul.

"Often do I feel as though the sea were really in my soul itself. And
as in the sea there are hidden water-plants, which only come to the
surface at the moment they bloom, and sink again as soon as they fade,
so at times do wondrous flower-pictures form in the depths of my soul,
and rise up, shed perfume around, and gleam and vanish.... Then the
ships that sail by! As you walk along the shore, is it not a pretty
sight to see them--their great white sails look like stately swans.
And still more beautiful is the sight when the setting sun throws
great rays of glory round a passing bark."

In silence Paul gazed at her. He hardly breathed, lest some banal word
should frighten this wonderful nymph away.

"And then at night,"--she went on dreamily--"what a strange and
mysterious sensation the meeting with strange ships at sea produces.
You fancy that perhaps your best friends, whom you have not seen for
years, are sailing silently by, and that you are losing them
forevermore."

Paul was strangely moved. He loved the sea himself, as well as the
mountains--his Queen had taught him its call years ago--and he often
wandered about the shore, pondering over the strange old legends with
which centuries have wreathed it.

"You are wonderful!" he whispered to the lady. "You're like some
water-maiden--and I believe your eyes are a bit of the sea itself!"

"Ah! Now you are like all the rest--French and Russians and Germans!
Why spoil my rhapsody with personalities?"

"Forgive me!" Paul looked sufficiently penitent, and Mademoiselle with
a playful gesture of absolution spoke again