"You will return?"
"If I may--when you are less occupied."
I was acquainted with nearly all the guests and was stopped a dozen
times on my way across the salon to where the prince was conversing
with a knot of men, and as I glanced backward towards the princess with
each pause I made, I always met her eyes fixed upon me--unconsciously
until they met my gaze--even though she was engaged with the people who
formed the group around her.
I did not seek the prince, after all. I turned aside realizing that I
would rather be alone with the pleasurable thrill which still pulsed in
my veins, than to crush it out with society talk, which was my
particular aversion. I wandered on through the rooms, pausing for a
moment here and there to exchange greetings with acquaintances, and at
last emerged upon the glass-covered garden which was a miniature forest
of shrubbery, palms and floral miracles. It was a spacious place dimly
lighted by lamps that were shaded by red and green and yellow globes,
and it was traversed by paths that were carpeted with Eastern rugs, and
bordered by alluring nooks so daintily arranged and so suggestive of
all things sentimental as to be indescribable. The garden was an
Oriental paradise, blooming in the midst of a Russian winter; and I
thought with a smile, a dangerous place for a bachelor even though he
were alone--for it set him to thinking. As if to render the contrast
even greater there was a furious snowstorm raging outside, and I could
hear the wind howling and shrieking past the house, and the rattle of
the snow as it hurled itself into fragments against the glass covering
of the enclosure. I wandered on down the path I had taken as far as the
extremity of the garden, and then turned into other paths. I paused
once to light a cigar, and went on again, hither and thither,
unheedingly; but at last I entered one of the Turkish nooks and
composed myself comfortably among the cushions. There I gave myself up
to the deliciousness of the hour, for no other word can describe it.
There had seemed not to be another soul in the garden when I entered
it, and I felt all that bliss which solitude lends to perfect
surroundings. There might have been a thousand persons traversing the
paths, and I could not have heard them, but I was presently startled
out of my reveries by hearing my own name--or rather the one by which I
was known--pronounced in a voice which I had learned, in a few brief
moments, to recognize.
"Dubravnik," said the princess, evidently in reply to a question
concerning me. She uttered my name in a manner that thrilled me, too.
Her companion, a man, responded: "Bah! A friend of Prince Michael's, and therefore a friend of the
czar's. It would be a dangerous experiment to sound him, princess."