"You are right," Karschoff told him. "Karetsky is a well-to-do man of
commerce, but her mother was a Baroness Kolchekoff, a distant relative
of my own. The Kolchekoffs lived on their estates, and as a matter of
fact we never met. Naida has gone over to the people, though, body and
soul."

"She is extraordinarily beautiful," Nigel remarked.

His companion was swinging his eyeglass back and forth by its cord.

"Many men have thought so," he replied. "For myself, there is antagonism
in my blood against her. I wonder whether I have done well or ill in
making you two acquainted."

Nigel felt a sudden desire to break through a certain seriousness which
had come over his own thoughts and which was reflected in the other's
tone. He shrugged his shoulders slightly and filled his glass with wine.

"Every man in the world is the better," he propounded, "for adding to
the circle of his acquaintances a beautiful woman."

"Sententious and a trifle inaccurate," the Prince objected, with a
sudden flash of his white teeth. "The beauty which is not for him has
been many a man's undoing. But seriously, my quarrel with Naida is one
of prejudice only. She is the confidante and the inspiration of
Matinsky, and though one realises, of course, that so long as there is a
Russian Republic there must be a Russian President, I suppose I should
scarcely be human if I did not hate him."

"Surely," Nigel queried, "she must be very much his junior?"