wide, and in the stress of emotion they quivered, like those of a horse, thus recalling her glorious ancestor, the virile Cossack of the Czarina.

The ball was nearly over before she noticed the Spaniard. There were so many officers constantly at her heels, greeting her cruel jokes and vulgar expressions with a smile of gratitude!—Suddenly Saldaña, who was standing between two doorways, was startled by a clear but commanding female voice.

"Your arm, Marquis."

And before he could offer it to her the young Princess took it, and led him off to the buffet in the drawing room.

Nadina drank a good sized glass of vodka, preferring this liquor of the people to the champagne which the servants were pouring out in large quantities. Then smiling at her companion she drew him into the embrasure of a window where they were almost hidden by the curtains.

"Your wounds!... I want to see your wounds!"

Saldaña was dumfounded at the command of this great lady accustomed to carrying out her most whimsical ideas. Blushing like a soldier, who had lived all his life among men, he finally drew up the left sleeve of his uniform, revealing a brown, hairy forearm, with large tendons, and deeply furrowed by the scar of a bullet wound received back in Spain.

The Princess admired his athletic arm, with its dark skin, cut by the jagged white of the new tissue.

"The other—the others! I want to see the rest of them!" she commanded, gazing at him fiercely, as though she were ready to bite, while her lips, moist and shining, curved sharply downward.

She had seized his arm with a hand that trembled, while with the other she tried to undo the gold cords on the officer's breast.

Saldaña drew back, stammering. "Oh! Princess!" What she desired was impossible. It was impossible to show the other wounds to a lady....

He felt on the one visible scar the contact of two lips. Nadina, bowing her proud head, was kissing his arm.

"Hero!... Oh! my hero!"

Immediately afterward she drew herself up again, cold and distant, with no other sign of emotion than a slight quivering of her nostrils. No longer was she tormented by the desire to see immediately those frightful scars of which she had heard from some of the comrades of the brave 

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