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Updated: June 21, 2025
The virgin nun-face had mysteriously changed the moon that had looked so pure and spotless was now blood-red with passion. Opal crept back, pulling the curtains together again, and threw herself face downward upon the couch. God help her! Paul Zalenska lingered long over his dinner that night. He was tired and thoughtful.
"Daring one!" she said, "who told you to call me that? The hotel people have been talking, I suppose." "No," said Paul, surprised, "I called you Princess just because you seem like one to me but now I guess from what you say, you are not plain Madame Zalenska." Her eyes clouded for a second. "Madame Zalenska does to travel with but you shall call me what you like." He grew emboldened.
As for Paul and the Boy, they knew not what people thought or said, and cared still less. There was too strong a bond of camaraderie between them to be disturbed by the murmurings of a wind that could blow neither of them good or ill. And the Boy was now twenty years of age. Suddenly Paul Zalenska broke their long silence.
"And I dare say he wasn't the only one who stared!" put in Lady Alice in dry tones of reprehension. "I can't imagine who it could be, can you, mother?" "Not unless it was that strange young Monsieur Zalenska Paul Zalenska, I believe he calls himself Paul Verdayne's guest. I rather think, from the description, that it must have been he!" "Zalenska? What a name!
But Paul Zalenska heard, and smiled. "Suffering, and sorrow, and many tears," repeated the American girl, musingly, "and maybe sin!" Then she went on, firmly, "Very well, Alice, give me the suffering and sorrow, and many tears and the sin, too, if it must be, for we are all sinners of greater or less degree but at any rate, give me life!
Rebellious thoughts were flitting through the brain of Paul Zalenska as he rode forth the next morning, tender and fanciful ones, too, as he watched the sun's kisses fall on leaf and flower and tree, drying with their soft, insistent warmth the tears left by the dew of night, and wooing all Nature to awake to look up with glorious smiles, for the world, after all, is beautiful and full of love and laughter.
While the Prince or Paul Zalenska, as I will now call him sat in his brooding brown study, clutching the imperial letter tightly in his young hand, his attention was arrested by the sound of voices on the other side of the hawthorn hedge.
On the morning of the day appointed, Paul Zalenska from an upper deck watched the party he had been awaiting, as they mounted the gang-plank. Gilbert Ledoux he scarcely noticed. The Count de Roannes, too, interested him no longer when, with a hasty glance, he had assured himself that the Frenchman was as old as Ledoux and not the gay young dandy in Opal's train that he had feared to find him.
"Have you looked at the orchid you wished so much to see, Monsieur Zalenska? Mamma is very proud of it!" "Opal!" But she went on, heedless of his interruption, "Because, if you haven't, you must look at it hastily you have wasted some time quite foolishly already and I have promised to join the Count in a few moments, and " "Very well. I understand, Opal!" Paul stiffened.
Paul and Opal, though conscious of the double barrier between them, tried to forget its existence for the moment, and, at intervals, succeeded admirably. For were they not in the spring-time of youth, and in love? And Paul Zalenska talked to this girl as he had never talked to anyone before not even Paul Verdayne! She brought out the latent best in him.
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