When the model came back, and they began to work again, she felt that she had become part of a wonderful experience. She had never seen the princess talking to any one else, and, amazing and undeserved as the tribute was, she could not be mistaken in thinking that the lovely lady wished to know her, and perhaps to allow her the dear privilege of such intercourse as their atelier life permitted. She never expected it to go beyond that; but that was far more than anything she had imagined. Across one corner of her canvas Martha’s name was scrawled in full, and she knew that the princess must have seen it. She looked to see if there was any signature upon the princess’s picture, and, as if interpreting her thought, her neighbor, with a brilliant smile, dipped her brush in vermilion, and wrote in a bold, strong hand the word “Sonia.” This name (which Martha did not know to be the Russian abbreviation of Sophia) seemed to the girl very odd and beautiful, and peculiarly appropriate to its possessor. II Martha said nothing to her mother and sisters of her encounter with the princess. She had a way of locking very close in her heart her most personal and sacred feelings, and all that related to the princess was sacred to her now. During her earlier years she had so often been laughed at for an enthusiast that she had learned to keep back what she felt most strongly; and for that very reason, perhaps, the intensity of her feelings grew greater as she grew older. The enthusiasm of her life was for her only brother, whom she worshiped with a blind idolatry of the extent of which even he was unaware. There had been one or two other divinities in her horizon, always second to Harold; but at this period of her life she was suffering from a sense of disappointment in these as, one after the other, they had come short of her ardent expectations. She was now, therefore, in the exact state of mind to take on a new object of worship. This the princess had become. It was not surprising that Martha’s ideal had been so repeatedly unrealized, for it was a difficult one. She had suffered acutely from her former disappointments, and had even resolved never to pin her faith and hope on another woman. But the princess was not to be resisted. Martha felt that even if her goddess never spoke to her again, she was worthy of all adoration. As the young girl drove through the streets of Paris in the early morning of the day following her brief interview with the princess, her heart was very happy.