Alone in the world!...  Her own wrong-doing had killed her poor father!  No one was left now except her good old aunt, who was “existing” far away in Spain, like a vegetable in a garden, her stupid mind entirely on her prayer-book.  Leonora vented her anguish in a burst of hatred for Salvatti.  He was responsible for her abandonment of her father!  She deserted him, taking up with a certain count Selivestroff, a handsome and wealthy Russian, captain in the Imperial Guard.

So she had found her destiny!  Her life would always be like that!  She would pass from stage to stage, from song to song, belonging to everybody—­and to nobody!

That fair Russian, so strong, so manly, so thoroughly a gentleman, had loved her truly, with a passionate humble adoration.

He would kneel submissively at her feet, like Hercules in the presence of Adriadne, resting his chin on her knees, looking up into her face with his gray, kindly, caressing eyes.  Timidly, doubtfully, he would approach her every day as if he were meeting her for the first time and feared a repulse.  He would kiss her softly, delicately, with hushed reserve, as if she were a fragile jewel that might break beneath his tenderest caress.  Poor Selivestroff!  Leonora had wept at the thought of him.  In Russia and with princely Russian sumptuousness, they had lived for a year in his castle, in the country, among a population of sodden moujiks who worshipped that beautiful woman in the white and blue furs as devotedly as if she had been a Virgin stepping forth from the gilded background of an ikon.

But Leonora could not live away from stageland:  the ladies of the rural aristocracy avoided her, and she needed applause and admiration.  She induced Selivestroff to move to St. Petersburg, and for a whole winter she sang at the Opera there, like a grand dame turned opera singer out of love for the work.

Once more she became the reigning belle.  All the young Russian aristocrats who held commissions in the Imperial Guard, or high posts in the Government, spoke enthusiastically of the great Spanish beauty; and they envied Selivestroff.  The count yearned moodily for the solitude of his castle, which held so many loving memories for him.  In the bustling, competitive life of the capital, he grew jealous, sad, melancholy, irritable at the necessity of defending his love.  He could sense the underground warfare that was being waged against him by Leonora’s countless admirers.

One morning she was rudely awakened and leapt out of bed to find the count stretched out on a divan, pale, his shirt stained with blood.  A number of gentlemen dressed in black were standing around him.  They had just brought him in from a carriage.  He had been wounded in the chest.  The evening before, on leaving the theatre, the count had gone up for a moment to his Club.  He had caught an allusion to Leonora and himself in some words of a friend.  There had been blows—­then hasty