“Give me your hand, my little beauty. Give it to me. Yes, I will tell you your fortune, for in truth I am a mystic, as you have said. Your little heart of gold did not lead you astray when it told you that I am its soothsayer, and that I can foretell it the truth, whole and undefiled. But one thing have you forgotten. It is that, though one may tell a woman the truth, one can never impart to her intelligence and sagacity. No, intelligence is never a young girl’s. She may hear the truth, but she cannot understand it. For, though in her head there may lurk a serpent of cunning, her heart is but a fountain of amorous tears. Yet always she will find her way unaided, and worm her way through any misfortune. Yes, a clever woman invariably succeeds—partly through her power of intuition, and partly through the power of her beauty (a single glance from which can intoxicate the soul). Yes, beauty will always overcome strength, and break in two even a heart of steel. . . . Will you know trouble, know adversity? No; for sorrow is not for the feeble heart. It is for the heart of strength—for the heart which can silently bathe itself in tears of blood. True sorrow will never be heard to complain; but your sorrow, maiden, is but a mark in the sand which the rain may wash out, and the sun efface, and the wind obliterate. . . . Will you ever be loved? At least you will never be the slave of the man who loves you. You will take from him his liberty—and you will never restore it. Yet when you, in your turn, shall seek a lover, you will never succeed in finding one. Always it will be as though you had sowed seed, and some one else had come and reaped the harvest of it. Just now, O tender child, O little creature of the sunshine, you let fall a tear into my cup—and with that tear you sowed a thousand future tears, even before the words had left your lips. Ah! Some day those tears will flow in abundance! They will flow when, during long, long nights of despair, sorrow shall come upon you, and shall wrap you about with cankering memories. Then will you remember the tear which you dropped to-day! Yet will that tear never be to you aught but an alien, a poisoned, tear—a little drop of water which shall weigh heavier even than lead. It will burn into the blood of your white bosom, and all night, all night, until the weary dawn of a new day of misery shall rise, you will toss upon your little bed under the stress of a wound which will not heal for many and many a day. . . . Come! Pour me out another cupful of wine, Katerina, my dove. Pour it out. Pour me out another cupful as a reward for all my soothsaying, and let us have done with idle talk.”