The Professor was by this time so steeled to the unexpected that he hardly paused to consider the strange incongruity between the Princess’s account of her fortunes and the setting in which she lived. He had read Mon Caprice on the gate, and that was the name on the envelope he had found in his pocket. With a resolute hand he rang the bell and asked a resplendent footman if the Princess Balalatinsky were at home.
He was shown through a long succession of drawing-rooms, in the last of which the Princess rose from the depths of a broad divan. She was dressed in black draperies, half-transparent—no, half-translucent; and she stood before the Professor in all the formidable completeness of her beauty.
Instantly his mind clicked again, and a voice shrilled up at him from the depths: “You always knew you could still recognize a beautiful woman when you saw one”; but he closed his ears to the suggestion and advanced toward the lady.
Before he could take more than three steps she was at his side, almost at his feet; her burning clasp was on his wrists, and her eyes were consuming him like coals of fire.
“Master! Maestro! Disguise is useless! You choose to come to me unannounced; but I was sure you would answer my appeal, and I should have recognized you anywhere, and among any number of people.” She lifted his astonished hand to her lips. “It is the penalty of genius,” she breathed.
“But—” gasped the Professor.
A scented finger was laid across his lips. “Hush: not yet. Let me tell you first why I ventured to write to you.” She drew him gently down to an arm-chair beside the divan, and herself sank orientally into its pillows. “I thought I had exhausted all the emotions of life. At my age—is it not a tragedy? But I was mistaken. It is true that I had tried philosophy, marriage, mathematics, divorce, sculpture and love; but I had never attempted the stage. How long it sometimes takes to discover one’s real vocation! No doubt you may have gone through the same uncertainties yourself. At any rate, my gift for the drama did not reveal itself till three months ago, and I have only just completed my play, ‘The Scarlet Cataract,’ a picture of my life, as the title suggests—and which, my friends tell me, is not without dramatic merit. In fact, if I were to listen to them....”
The Professor struggled from his seat. His old fear of her madness had returned. He began very mildly: “It is quite natural that you should mistake me for some one else—”
With an inimitable gesture she waved the interruption aside. “But what I want to explain is that, of course, the leading rôle can have but one interpreter—Myself. The things happened to Me: who else could possibly know how to act them? Therefore, if I appeal to you—on my knees, Illustrious Impresario!—it is in my double character as dramatist and tragédienne; for in spite of appearances my life has been a tragedy, as you will acknowledge if you will let me outline its principal events in a few words....”
But here she had to pause a second for breath, and the Professor, on his feet, actually shouted his protest. “Madam, I cannot let you go on another moment, first because I’ve heard the story of your life already, and secondly because I’m not the man you suppose.”