As he gravely related these fables he was conscious of the penetrating gaze of the third woman. She was tall, frail-looking, with a dark skin, hair black and glossy, and she had the most melancholy eyes in the world. Paul returned her glance with discretion. His eyes were Irish blue-gray and full of the devil at times, and they could be very sympathetic and melting when he willed. The two young people examined each other with that calm regard which, as Schopenhauer declares, mars or makes the destiny of a new generation. But metaphysics and the biology of the sexes bothered not at all the youth and maiden. Paul admired the classic regularity of her nose and forehead, and wondered why her face seemed familiar. Her mouth was large, irregular, perverse. It suggested Marie Bashkirtseff’s, and it was just as yearning and dissatisfied. Despite their sadness, fun lurked in the corners of her eyes, and he knew that she enjoyed his harmless hoax. Then they both burst out laughing, and the princess said in a surprised voice: “Helena, why do you laugh with the young American gentleman?” She also mentioned a family name that caused the New Yorker to stare. What, was this girl with the determined chin and brows the identical one who almost set Russia quarrelling with another nation and upset the peace of Roumania? Yes, it was, and Paul no longer puzzled over her face. It had been common property of the photographers and newspaper illustrators a few years ago, and as he mentally indexed its features he almost said aloud that her curious beauty had never been even faintly reproduced. His imagination was stirred; Roumania had always seemed so remote, and here was he, Paul Godard, a plain American citizen, face to face with the heroine of one of those mysterious Eastern intrigues in which kings, crowns, queens, and ladies-in-waiting were all delightfully mixed up. So he chatted with Helena about Wagner and Degeneracy, and discovered that she was an admirer of Ludwig of Bavaria, Nietzsche, Guy de Maupassant, Poe, Schumann, Chopin, Marie Bashkirtseff, and all the rest of the sick-brained people born during the sick-brained nineteenth century. She, too, had written a book, which was soon to appear. It was full of the Weltschmerz of Schopenhauer and the bold upspringing individualism of Nietzsche. She had odd theories concerning the Ring of the Nibelungs, and had read Browning’s Sordello. She told Paul that she found but one stumbling-block in Wagner. How, she asked gravely, with a slight blush--how could Parsifal become Lohengrin’s father? Paul said he didn’t know. It must have occurred long after his experiences with Kundry and the Flower Girls, and perhaps it was a sort of---- “Oh, no, M. Godard!” she quickly answered. “Not that. The swan died, you know; besides, Parsifal was always a Pure Fool.” Paul suggested that it might have been another of the same name but of a different family. And then the conversation went to pieces, for the soprano called out: