"In thorough earnest and in cold blood," said the Grand Duke, laying his hand on Araktseieff's arm. "All my life through I had never known what it was to be loved. I verily believe that the nurse who nursed me thrashed me for being such a piece of deformity. Not even a dog have I ever been able to attach to me. Look where I will, I see that every one shrinks back from me. My very voice, which I try in vain to moderate, is rough and grating, as if I were perpetually scolding. I have never heard an endearing epithet since I was out of the nursery. And suddenly Fate, like a blind hen, casts in my way a pearl of women, a tender soul who loves me with all her being. She does not say it, she feels it--nay, she lets me feel it. She lives in me like the very soul and thought of me. The little good there is in me she awakens and makes me reconciled to myself. She alone of all the world has brought sunshine into my dark life. When I am ill she nurses me; when I am violent she pacifies me. She is my better self! And do you believe that I would renounce her for any prize the earth could give? That for any throne in the whole world I would exchange this easy-chair where she has sat nestling up to me? Ah, what fools you must be to think it!" "Your Highness! I have long made the human mind an object of study, and it is not new to find that love is the most powerful factor we have to deal with on earth. It is strong, but not lasting. To-day your Highness may be feeling as you say; but the human heart is as variable as the sky; and earth, the fatherland, is its antipodes. To-day we may feel as though we had cast away a whole paradise of bliss in descending from heaven to earth; to-morrow we discover that our supposed heaven was but a cloud which glistened in the sun and disappeared, leaving 'not a wrack behind.' Earth, on the contrary, remains firm beneath our feet; it never loses its power of gravity. What? Could your Imperial Highness stand by with folded arms and see the whole monarchy, a prey to the flames, sink into ashes at your feet, that your head might rest undisturbed on the lap of the woman you love?" "Well, and even then?"