It is frequently the case that we meet people who antagonize us the moment a glance or a handshake is exchanged, while our inner consciousness offers no explanation for the reasonless antipathy; on the other hand Fate brings us sometimes in contact with personalities which at once appeal to a sixth sense which is unexplainable and indefinable, but which seems to comprehend more than the combined five educated and trained sensibilities. What is that sixth sense? Who can tell? I only know that in one moment I felt as if I had known the princess all my life, and I knew instinctively that the same influences were affecting her.
I will not attempt to describe her, more than to afford a mere outline for something that was indescribable, for the charm which pervaded the atmosphere around her was felt rather than seen. It would be unfair to call her beautiful, as the prince had done, for that word comprehends merely an outward and visible sign, and with the Princess Zara, although her beauty was striking, it was the least of her attractions. I had thought that I was born and had lived, devoid of that form of self consciousness which is called diffidence, although it is only an expression of egotism; but for the first time in my life I found myself ill at ease, and wondering if I was appearing to advantage. I was conscious of myself; and what was stranger still I realized that this trained society beauty, the undoubted heroine of unnumbered conquests, was as restless as I was.
Princess Zara!
The expression as I write it brings vividly back to me the moment when I stood beside her that night amid the throng of guests surrounding us, but nevertheless conscious only of her presence. There are some occasions in the lives of men which they are not inclined to dwell upon or even to speak about; which they preserve jealously, as secrets in their own hearts, selfishly indisposed to acquaint others with them lest some of the magic of the actual moment, reinduced by retrospection, may be lost in the telling. But I could not recite the history of my experiences in St. Petersburg at that time without uncovering my innermost soul, as it was affected and influenced by Zara de Echeveria, whose charm of manner, whose redundant beauty and powers of fascination, were beyond all effort at description.
Her eyes were like stars, and yet were not too brilliant. Glowing in their depths somewhere beyond visible ken, was the assurance of unspeakable promise; and there seemed to emanate from her personality a glowing enthusiasm which thrilled whomever came into her presence.
The mere outward description of personal beauty will be forever inadequate to describe the emotions that influence a man, when he sees for the first time, the feminine perfection of creation which he is destined to adore. One may be fascinated, attracted, by any one of many qualities, or by all of them combined; one may discover perfection of form or feature, and may accept these suggestions as comprising all that is necessary to engender that quality within us which we call love; but nearly always one finds that the imitation has been accepted for the real, and that it has been so accepted and claimed only because the genuine has never appeared.
But whenever a man finds the real one, whenever it is his good fortune to encounter the genuine article, there remains no doubt in his soul of its reality. He sees and feels and knows. There is no denying the absoluteness of it. It is a perfect knowledge brought home to him with an absoluteness, which for the moment, is almost paralyzing in its effect, and the immediate consequences of which are utterly beyond comprehension.
Standing there in the presence of Zara de Echeveria, surrounded as we were by throngs of guests, interrupted frequently as it was quite natural we should be, we two were yet as utterly alone as if we had been standing upon a solitary rock in the midst of a waste of waters beyond which the vision could not penetrate.
We were utterly alone in a world by ourselves; and the strange part of it was that we both seemed to realize the truth, although neither of us at that moment could contemplate the understanding of the other.
Until I drove with the prince to that house where she received, my whole mind and intelligence had been centered upon the work I had to do at the Russian capitol; but having passed the portals of Zara's palace, and being taken into her presence, made the whole world appear suddenly small indeed, and left all that was great, and good, and worth attaining, encompassed in the very small space in which she stood.