“Yes,” said Helena von Ritz, “they two loved each other, even as they were.  So here am I, born of that love.”

Now we all sat silent for a time.  “That birth was at my father’s estates,” resumed the same even, merciless voice.  “After some short time of travels, they returned to the estates; and, yes, there I was born, half noble, half peasant; and then there began the most cruel thing the world has ever known.

“The nobles of the court and of the country all around began to make existence hideous for my mother.  The aristocracy, insulted by the republicanism of these young noblemen, made life a hell for the most gentle woman of Hungary.  Ah, they found new ways to make her suffer.  They allowed her to share in my father’s estate, allowed her to appear with him when he could prevail upon her to do so.  Then they twitted and taunted her and mocked her in all the devilish ways of their class.  She was more beautiful than any court beauty of them all, and they hated her for that.  She had a good mind, and they hated her for that.  She had a faithful, loyal heart, and they hated her for that.  And in ways more cruel than any man will ever know, women and men made her feel that hate, plainly and publicly, made her admit that she was chosen as breeding stock and nothing better.  Ah, it was the jest of Europe, for a time.  They insulted my mother, and that became the jest of the court, of all Vienna.  She dared not go alone from the castle.  She dared not travel alone.”

“But your father resented this?”

She nodded.  “Duel after duel he fought, man after man he killed, thanks to his love for her and his manhood.  He would not release what he loved.  He would not allow his class to separate him from his choice.  But the women! Ah, he could not fight them!  So I have hated women, and made war on them all my life.  My father could not placate his Emperor.  So, in short, that scientific experiment ended in misery—­and me!”

The room had grown dimmer.  The sun was sinking as she talked.  There was silence, I know, for a long time before she spoke again.

“In time, then, my father left his estates and went out to a small place in the country; but my mother—­her heart was broken.  Malice pursued her.  Those who were called her superiors would not let her alone.  See, he weeps, my father, as he thinks of these things.

“There was cause, then, to weep.  For two years, they tell me, my mother wept Then she died.  She gave me, a baby, to her friend, a woman of her village—­Threlka Mazoff.  You have seen her.  She has been my mother ever since.  She has been the sole guardian I have known all my life.  She has not been able to do with me as she would have liked.”

“You did not live at your own home with your father?” I asked.

“For a time.  I grew up.  But my father, I think, was permanently shocked by the loss of the woman he had loved and whom he had brought into all this cruelty.  She had been so lovable, so beautiful—­she was so beautiful, my mother!  So they sent me away to France, to the schools.  I grew up, I presume, proof in part of the excellence of my father’s theory.  They told me that I was a beautiful animal!”