The Princess Zara!
It is frequently the case that we meet people who antagonize us the
moment a glance or a handshake is exchanged, while our inner
consciousness offers no explanation for the reasonless antipathy; on
the other hand Fate brings us sometimes in contact with personalities
which at once appeal to a sixth sense which is unexplainable and
indefinable, but which seems to comprehend more than the combined five
educated and trained sensibilities. What is that sixth sense? Who can
tell? I only know that in one moment I felt as if I had known the
princess all my life, and I knew instinctively that the same influences
were affecting her.
I will not attempt to describe her, more than to afford a mere outline
for something that was indescribable, for the charm which pervaded the
atmosphere around her was felt rather than seen. It would be unfair to
call her beautiful, as the prince had done, for that word comprehends
merely an outward and visible sign, and with the Princess Zara,
although her beauty was striking, it was the least of her attractions.
I had thought that I was born and had lived, devoid of that form of
self consciousness which is called diffidence, although it is only an
expression of egotism; but for the first time in my life I found myself
ill at ease, and wondering if I was appearing to advantage. I was
conscious of myself; and what was stranger still I realized that this
trained society beauty, the undoubted heroine of unnumbered conquests,
was as restless as I was.
Princess Zara!
The expression as I write it brings vividly back to me the moment when
I stood beside her that night amid the throng of guests surrounding us,
but nevertheless conscious only of her presence. There are some
occasions in the lives of men which they are not inclined to dwell upon
or even to speak about; which they preserve jealously, as secrets in
their own hearts, selfishly indisposed to acquaint others with them
lest some of the magic of the actual moment, reinduced by
retrospection, may be lost in the telling. But I could not recite the
history of my experiences in St. Petersburg at that time without
uncovering my innermost soul, as it was affected and influenced by Zara
de Echeveria, whose charm of manner, whose redundant beauty and powers
of fascination, were beyond all effort at description.
Her eyes were like stars, and yet were not too brilliant. Glowing in
their depths somewhere beyond visible ken, was the assurance of
unspeakable promise; and there seemed to emanate from her personality a
glowing enthusiasm which thrilled whomever came into her presence.
The mere outward description of personal beauty will be forever
inadequate to describe the emotions that influence a man, when he sees
for the first time, the feminine perfection of creation which he is
destined to adore. One may be fascinated, attracted, by any one of many
qualities, or by all of them combined; one may discover perfection of
form or feature, and may accept these suggestions as comprising all
that is necessary to engender that quality within us which we call
love; but nearly always one finds that the imitation has been accepted
for the real, and that it has been so accepted and claimed only because
the genuine has never appeared.