People of experience, accustomed to society and the ways of the great world, can often decide from the first minute the _rôle_ which anyone is likely to play among them. People of experience, at the first view of this young man, at his first entrance, merely by the way he entered the hall, decided that his _rôle_ in society would be brilliant--that more than one feminine heart would beat faster for his presence, that more than one dandy's wrath would be kindled by his successes. "How handsome he is!" a whisper went round among the ladies. The men for the most part remained silent. A few twisted the ends of their mustache and made as though they had not noticed him. This was already enough to foreshadow a brilliant career. And indeed Count Kallash could not have passed unnoticed, even among a thousand young men of his class. Tall and vigorous, wonderfully well proportioned, he challenged comparison with Antinoüs. His pale face, tanned by the sun, had an expression almost of weariness. His high forehead, with clustering black hair and sharply marked brows, bore the impress of passionate feeling and turbulent thought strongly repressed. It was difficult to define the color of his deep-set, somewhat sunken eyes, which now flashed with southern fire, and were now veiled, so that one seemed to be looking into an abyss. A slight mustache and pointed beard partly concealed the ironical smile that played on his passionate lips. The natural grace of good manners and quiet but admirably cut clothes completed the young man's exterior, behind which, in spite of all his reticence, could be divined a haughty and exceptional nature. A more profound psychologist would have seen in him an obstinately passionate, ungrateful nature, which takes from others everything it desires, demanding it from them as a right and without even a nod of acknowledgment. Such was Count Nicholas Kallash. A few days after the reception at Prince Shadursky's Baroness von Döring was installed in a handsome apartment on Mokhovoi Street, at which her "brother," Ian Karozitch, or, to give him his former name, Bodlevski, was a frequent visitor. By a "lucky accident" he had met on the day following the reception our old friend Sergei Antonovitch Kovroff, the "captain of the Golden Band." Their recognition was mutual, and, after a more or less faithful recital of the events of the intervening years, they had entered into an offensive and defensive alliance. When Baroness von Döring was comfortably settled in her new quarters, Sergei Antonovitch brought a visitor to Bodlevski: none other than the Hungarian nobleman, Count Nicholas Kallash. "_Gentlemen, you are strangers_; let me introduce you to each other," said Kovroff, presenting Count Kallash to Bodlevski.