“It is so agreeable to let the body move from place to place, and remain in a peaceful aloofness of the spirit all the time,” he said at last.  “To watch all the rushing currents which dominate human beings when they do not know how to manipulate them.  If they did, the millennium would come,—­but, meanwhile, it is reserved for the few who have learned them to enjoy this present plane we are on.”

“You mean you can control events and shape your life as you please, then?” Stella asked surprised, while she raised her sweet shy eyes to his inquiringly.  “I wish I knew how!”

“Shall I try to teach you, mademoiselle?” he said.

“Yes, indeed.”

“Then you must not look down all the time, even though the contemplation of your long eyelashes gives me a pleasure—­I would prefer the eyes themselves—­the eyes are the indication of what is passing in the soul, and I would study this moving panorama.”

Stella’s color deepened, but she met his blue orbs without flinching—­so he went on: 

“I had the fortune to be born a Russian, which has given me time to study these things.  My country does not require my work beyond my being a faithful servant of my Emperor.  Since I am not a soldier, I can do as I choose.  But you in England are now in a seething caldron, and it would be difficult, no doubt, for you to spend the hours required—­although the national temperament would lend itself to all things calm if it were directed.”

“But for myself,” Stella demanded, “I am not a man, and need not interest myself in the nation’s affairs—­how can I grow to guide my own—­as you seem to do?”

“Never permit yourself to be ruffled by anything to commence with,” Count Roumovski began gravely, while the pupils of his eyes appeared to grow larger.  “Whatever mood you are in, you connect yourself with the cosmic current of that mood—­you become in touch, so to speak, with all the other people who are under its dominion, and so it gains strength because unity is strength.  If you can understand that as a basic principle, you can see that it is only a question of controlling yourself and directing your moods with those currents whose augmentation can bring you good.  You must never be negative and drift.  You can be drawn in any adverse way if you do.”

“I think I understand,” said Stella, greatly interested.

“Then you must use your critical faculties and make selections of what is best—­and you must encourage common sense and distrust altruism.  Sanity is the thing to aim at.”

“Yes.”

“The view of the world has become so distorted upon almost every point which started in good, that nothing but a cultivation of our individual critical faculties can enable us to see the truth—­and nine-tenths of civilized humanity have no real opinion of their own at all—­they simply echo those of others.”

“I feel that is true,” said Stella, thinking of her own case.