"Come, love, your arm for Madame Paul Meyrin."
PART II.
MADAME PAUL MEYRIN.
CHAPTER I.
VERA SOUBLAIEFF.
Vera's journey back to Pampeln was in no respect, it may well be imagined, like the journey she had made to France. Three months ago, when her first grief at leaving her father and giving up the daily round of her life, so sweet and placid, amid people who adored her, had passed, an eager curiosity had seized upon her. Notwithstanding her purity and ignorance of life, she felt, like a true daughter of Eve, the pleasure of being carried off to Paris and of living a life so different from that which she had hitherto known.
With the delight of a woman in such surroundings, she nestled in a corner of the well-cushioned and padded compartment in which the prince had placed her; and there, alone with her thoughts, under the physical charm of the rapid course of the train, which frightened her too, a little, had she fallen asleep as the night wore on, not much regretting her virginal bed at the Elva farm.
Next day, when Pierre Olsdorf, beginning with the part he intended to play toward the daughter of Soublaieff, came to ask her how she had passed the night, Vera was a good deal surprised for the moment; and her master had to insist before he could make her take her place at table beside him at the refreshment-room at Konigsberg; but, ascribing the honor that was done her to the necessities of the journey, she felt some little innocent vanity about it, and nothing more.
So it was all the way, and the pretty young Russian girl, thanks to her simplicity, arrived in Paris ready to be surprised at all the events that were to follow each other day by day, awakening only her imagination, until the moment came when her heart was moved so deeply.
How far behind were these things now! So far that she sometimes wondered if she had not merely dreamed them.
And then she would close her eyes, trying to dream still. She went over again the most trifling events of her stay in Paris—her surprise when Yvan summoned her to the luncheon-table of the prince; her emotions day by day as her master, growing kinder and more attentive with each succeeding one, had made their lives almost one; until that hour, the thought of which still made her shiver, when fate had cast her into his arms.