Thus it came about that a single sleigh was speeding across the plain of Tver.

Paul, with the composure that comes of a large experience, gathered the reins in his two hands, driving with both and with extended arms, after the manner of Russian yemschiks.  For a man must accommodate himself to circumstance, and fingerless gloves are not conducive to a finished style of handling the ribbons.

This driver knew that the next station was twenty miles off; that at any moment the horses might break down or plunge into a drift.  He knew that in the event of such emergencies it would be singularly easy for four people to die of cold within a few miles of help.  But he had faced such possibilities a hundred times before in this vast country, where the standard price of a human life is no great sum.  He was not, therefore, dismayed, but rather took delight in battling with the elements, as all strong men should, and most of them, thank Heaven, do.

Moreover he battled successfully, and before the moon was well up drew rein outside the village of Osterno, to accede at last to the oft-repeated prayer of the driver that he might return to his task.

“It is not meet,” the man had gruffly said, whenever a short halt was made to change horses, “that a great prince should drive a yemschik.”

“It is meet,” answered Paul simply, “for one man to help another.”

Then this man of deeds and not of words clambered into the sleigh and drew up the windows, hiding his head as he drove through his own village, where every man was dependent for life and being on his charity.

They were silent, for the ladies were tired and cold.

“We shall soon be there,” said Paul reassuringly.  But he did not lower the windows and look out, as any man might have wished to do on returning to the place of his birth.

Maggie sat back, wrapped in her furs.  She was meditating over the events of the day, and more particularly over a certain skill, a quickness of touch, a deft handling of stricken men which she had noted far out on the snowy steppe a few hours earlier.  Paul was a different man when he had to deal with pain and sickness; he was quicker, brighter, full of confidence in himself.  For the great sympathy was his—­that love of the neighbor which is thrown like a mantle over the shoulders of some men, making them different from their fellows, securing to them that love of great and small which, perchance, follows some when they are dead to that place where a human testimony may not be all in vain.

At the castle all was in readiness for the prince and princess, their departure from Tver having been telegraphed.  On the threshold of the great house, before she had entered the magnificent hall, Etta’s eyes brightened, her fatigue vanished.  She played her part before the crowd of bowing servants with that forgetfulness of mere bodily fatigue which is expected of princesses and other great ladies.  She swept up the broad staircase, leaning on Paul’s arm, with a carriage, a presence, a dazzling wealth of beauty, which did not fail to impress the onlookers.  Whatever Etta may have failed to bring to Paul Howard Alexis as a wife, she made him a matchless princess.