Alexandra watched the two personalities in her friend grow and flourish coincidently; the one uncompromising, traditional, bigotedly loyal to her house and condition; the other tragically human, womanly, broad, generous, passionate, sympathizing with the masses in their struggle for happiness. As Ranata grew older, the two women in her held many an excited controversy; there were hours of profound depression, discouragement, rebellion, abhorrence of the royal tread-mill, and a wild pagan love of mere existence. Encouraged by Alexandra, she had taken an early stand against matrimony. Twice, however, she had submitted to her father’s wishes, and permitted herself to be affianced; but one of her princes dying before the wedding-day and the other disgracing himself, she announced that she had now done all that could be expected of her, and should be permitted to remain single. The Emperor acknowledged the justice of her argument and bided his time. Of his daughter’s intense inner life he knew nothing, but he recognized that he had an individual, not a mere princess, on his hands, and he humored her as far as was in his power and consistent with her conspicuous position. Liberty beyond palace walls or royal enclosures was not to be considered; tradition was tradition, even to the toothpicks on the imperial table; moreover, although she bore no resemblance to her mother, fate had spared her the growling visage of the Hapsburgs, and, unlike most royal women, she looked born to crown and purple. To the world she was the princess, the goddess, a valuable asset for any reigning house; and, tradition aside, the glorified ideal of a vast and restless people must not be vulgarized, nor even dimmed. But although she had her separate household and a large income to spend on her wardrobe and private fancies, the Emperor and his ministers had no intention that a young, healthy, and beautiful princess should carry out her romantic programme of being an old maid. Happy in their ignorance of her resources, they occasionally frowned over the shrinking list of eligible princes. Early plans to place her on two of the highest thrones in Europe had been frustrated by a method so simple that neither the Emperor nor his advisers had ever penetrated the mystery. Ranata had treated each of the visiting young princes to a furious exhibition of temper, which, taken in connection with her red hair and American influences, appeared to them to be of alarming domestic significance. The impression was ineradicably fixed by the ingenious and terrible tales poured into their ears by the fertile Alexandra.