Princess Zara

The Princess Zara!

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.