The companion of Karl Steinmetz looked like an Englishman.  He was young and fair and quiet.  He looked like a youthful athlete from Oxford or Cambridge—­a simple-minded person who had jumped higher or run quicker than anybody else without conceit, taking himself, like St. Paul, as he found himself and giving the credit elsewhere.  And one finds that, after all, in this world of deceit, we are most of us that which we look like.  You, madam, look thirty-five to a day, although your figure is still youthful, your hair untouched by gray, your face unseamed by care.  You may look in your mirror and note these accidents with satisfaction; you may feel young and indulge in the pastimes of youth without effort.  But you are thirty-five.  We know it.  We who look at you can see it for ourselves, and, if you could only be brought to believe it, we think no worse of you on that account.

The man who rode beside Karl Steinmetz with gloomy eyes and a vague suggestion of flight in his whole demeanor was, like reader and writer, exactly what he seemed.  He was the product of an English public school and university.  He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of athletic exercise.  He had little education and highly developed muscles—­that is to say, he was no scholar but essentially a gentleman—­a good enough education in its way, and long may Britons seek it!

This young man’s name was Paul Howard Alexis, and Fortune had made him a Russian prince.  If, however, anyone, even Steinmetz, called him prince, he blushed and became confused.  This terrible title had brooded over him while at Eton and Cambridge.  But no one had found him out; he remained Paul Howard Alexis so far as England and his friends were concerned.  In Russia, however, he was known (by name only, for he avoided Slavonic society) as Prince Pavlo Alexis.  This plain was his; half the Government of Tver was his; the great Volga rolled through his possessions; sixty miles behind him a grim stone castle bore his name, and a tract of land as vast as Yorkshire was peopled by humble-minded persons who cringed at the mention of his Excellency.

All this because thirty years earlier a certain Princess Natasha Alexis had fallen in love with plain Mr. Howard of the British Embassy in St. Petersburg.  With Slavonic enthusiasm (for the Russian is the most romantic race on earth) she informed Mr. Howard of the fact, and duly married him.  Both these persons were now dead, and Paul Howard Alexis owed it to his mother’s influence in high regions that the responsibilities of princedom were his.  At the time when this title was accorded to him he had no say in the matter.  Indeed, he had little say in any matters except meals, which he still took in liquid form.  Certain it is, however, that he failed to appreciate his honors as soon as he grew up to a proper comprehension of them.

Equally certain is it that he entirely failed to recognize the enviability of his position as he rode across the plains of Tver toward the yellow Volga by the side of Karl Steinmetz.