Part 20

“There!” she cried, between tears and laughter, “go and send me a husband who will not beat me. As for me--I must go back to the Princess Daria, who is ill,” and she held out her hand to me.

I kissed it, with sincere gratitude for her good offices, and I thanked her, but she came closer to me and looked straight into my eyes with her fearless blue ones.

“Be kind to her,” she said, very low, that Daria might not hear, “be loving and be true--for she is a woman as well as a princess, and she loves you!”

With that, the charming creature fled into the shadow of the firs, followed by old Piotr, who had parted from his mistress solemnly, and with tears. And the dwarf, mounting first, rode on, and the Princess Daria and I followed slowly--riding side by side--out into the sunrise of the world and of our lives.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] A Russian proverb.

[B] The black lands.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Superscripted characters are preceded by a caret character: M^c.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.