The Professor was by this time so steeled to the unexpected that he hardly paused to consider the strange incongruity between the Princess’s account of her fortunes and the setting in which she lived. He had read _Mon Caprice_ on the gate, and that was the name on the envelope he had found in his pocket. With a resolute hand he rang the bell and asked a resplendent footman if the Princess Balalatinsky were at home. He was shown through a long succession of drawing-rooms, in the last of which the Princess rose from the depths of a broad divan. She was dressed in black draperies, half-transparent—no, half-translucent; and she stood before the Professor in all the formidable completeness of her beauty. Instantly his mind clicked again, and a voice shrilled up at him from the depths: “You always _knew_ you could still recognize a beautiful woman when you saw one”; but he closed his ears to the suggestion and advanced toward the lady. Before he could take more than three steps she was at his side, almost at his feet; her burning clasp was on his wrists, and her eyes were consuming him like coals of fire. “Master! _Maestro!_ Disguise is useless! You choose to come to me unannounced; but I was sure you would answer my appeal, and I should have recognized you anywhere, and among any number of people.” She lifted his astonished hand to her lips. “It is the penalty of genius,” she breathed. “But—” gasped the Professor. A scented finger was laid across his lips. “Hush: not yet. Let me tell you first why I ventured to write to you.” She drew him gently down to an arm-chair beside the divan, and herself sank orientally into its pillows. “I thought I had exhausted all the emotions of life. At _my_ age—is it not a tragedy? But I was mistaken. It is true that I had tried philosophy, marriage, mathematics, divorce, sculpture and love; but I had never attempted the stage. How long it sometimes takes to discover one’s real vocation! No doubt you may have gone through the same uncertainties yourself. At any rate, my gift for the drama did not reveal itself till three months ago, and I have only just completed my play, ‘The Scarlet Cataract,’ a picture of my life, as the title suggests—and which, my friends tell me, is not without dramatic merit. In fact, if I were to listen to them....” The Professor struggled from his seat. His old fear of her madness had returned. He began very mildly: “It is quite natural that you should mistake me for some one else—”