event formed an excuse for a series of entertainments, which brought the season to a close in princely fashion.

September came, and everybody was making the best of their way back to St. Petersburg. The Olsdorf mansion was open again. The princess often stole away from the drawing-room to be with her son.

Lise Olsdorf made a good mother. For two years she was not a single day absent from her child. She had scruples even about trusting him for a few hours to strange hands, and she nursed him through all his infantile troubles.

This tender, complete, and devoted maternal love estranged her somewhat from her husband, and gave her a special distaste for the life he led at Pampeln. She went with the prince, of course, to Courland, but she was rarely to be seen with him on his hunting expeditions and excursions on the banks of the Livonian gulf. The result of this was the birth of a sort of coolness between the prince and his wife, which was sure to grow day by day. Mme. Podoi very quickly saw what was happening. She spoke to her daughter about it, but Lise only replied:

"Why, mother, the prince is a very amiable man, but he is far from being the husband I dreamed of. He never in his life had a passion, and never will have, except for horses and dogs; I am sure of it."

The princess spoke the words in so bitter a tone, and with such a gleam in her fine eyes, that the ex-actress, well versed in this sort of thing, felt a presentiment of some catastrophe in the future.

She was careful, however, to betray no sign of uneasiness. She smiled even, and, smiling, made up her mind to watch.

At the end of three years from the birth of her son, when her constant care for him had become less indispensable, the princess showed a disposition to return to worldly pleasures. At first she was seen at the Michael Theatre, then she began to hold receptions anew, opening her doors to the foreign artistes that her mother introduced to her; and, finally, her reappearance at the court balls was triumphantly welcomed. Then, when the season in the capital was over, she became, to the surprise and joy of the prince, the hardy amazon that she had been in the first months of their marriage.

It was like a new birth in Lise, attributable, one might suppose, to the development of her symmetrical and dazzling beauty, while her bearing betrayed a kind of new vigor, surprising to her friends, which seemed to welcome noise and movement. She was soon a constant attendant at all entertainments, and took her place at the head of fashionable women in the highest circles of Russian society.

Still, notwithstanding the active, frivolous, and trying life she was leading, the heart of the Princess Olsdorf was calm. Amid the crowd of adorers her high position and beauty had won for her, she remained an irreproachable wife, but a radical change had occurred in both her mind and disposition. Her comparative indifference for frivolous things was replaced by a sort of unhealthy curiosity. She now lent a ready ear to risky stories which formerly had been very distasteful to her. Her imagination, suddenly aroused, seemed to question the unknown, and be in search of emotions of which she was ignorant. In theatrical performances she preferred a love story to a comedy of modern life and manners. After having for long read nothing in French but the historical romances of the elder Alexander Dumas, she began to devour highly spiced novels, which she obtained from France by stealth; for in Russia then, as now, the government forbade the introduction into the country of many of the best-known and least moral novels of the day.

In the earliest days of her marriage, as we have said, the princess would accompany her husband in his excursions, but only to please him. Now she was grown into a daring sportswoman, eager in the pursuit of the quarry, greedy of danger, and finding a sharp pleasure in encountering it. In these mad gallops, mounted on one of the small, fiery, and swift horses that are used in the country for hunting purposes, she was wonderfully handsome, her eyes glistening, her bosom heaving, her lips quivering. She seemed to try, by wearying her body, to keep her soul in repose.

These were the only moments in their married life in which there was a full community of ideas and sensations between Pierre Olsdorf and his wife; for when once the prince was on horseback and in pursuit of the game, he was no longer the cold and self-contained man he ordinarily was. He was like a soldier on the field of battle. For the time being he was on fire. The most spirited horses were controlled by his strong hand; no horn sounded so clear and loud as his. He was superbly cool and brave when he had a bear at bay. He seemed to be possessed with a love of courage when he attacked a wolf in its lair, and watched the beast being tossed piece by piece to the hounds.

The day over, all this manly energy vanished. Sitting down to table in the evening at the château, when the guests saw Pierre in his black coat, his face calm, his eyelids drooping, it was hard to believe that this was the man whose impetuous daring would sometimes frighten his companions in the chase.

The strange glances which Lise cast furtively on her husband then might have been observed. Her face expressed surprise and contempt, and when the prince paid her a compliment, she would reply dryly or sarcastically, though she tried not to betray the state of her mind.

The fact was that the princess, who had never really loved the man whose name she bore, and, above all, had never felt any sensual attraction toward him, began to avoid him, instituting comparisons between him and the other men by whom she was surrounded.

The calm and respectful affection of Pierre was not enough for her. That was not the love which, as a consequence of the active life she led, her awakened senses gave her glimpses. She felt that the contact of two beings really in love with each other must be more troubling to both. By what right was she cheated of the deep emotions, the burning pleasures, that she had heard some of her women friends whispering about? Was not her beauty worthy of being passionately loved? Was not she desirable from every point of view? Where, then, was the excuse for this monotony in her life, this lake without a ripple on its surface, this heaven without a cloud? She thirsted unconsciously, as it were, for unknown storms, and the fact made her irritable and nervous.

This moral and physical excitement led the princess at first to try and rouse her husband. Supposing that she might succeed by making him jealous, she grew coquettish, whimsical, frivolous, much like many of the young women of the Russian aristocracy; but Pierre did not seem to even notice the change. Lise's strangest whims drew from him no reproach. But as, doubtless, he had not found in her his ideal of a woman, he saw less and less of her each day, giving himself up to his own pursuits. Then Lise, humiliated and offended, isolated too, began to look about her with disquieted curiosity.

This happened in the middle of summer, when there were many guests at Pampeln, and certainly the princess had only to choose. None of them, however, brilliant as they were, pleased her so much that she distinguished him by particular favor.

They were what the young men were who had formed her court since her marriage—most of them military men, handsome cavaliers, elegant, brave, extravagant. They had all much the same good qualities and much the same bad. Their declarations offered no variety, they scarcely made her smile. Their attempts to win her heart were alike. The same madrigals were used, the same melodramatic protestations were spoken by all. There was nothing about them that was simple or natural, true or from the heart. Some of