Joseph Conrad: The Arrow of Gold
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	      a machine-readable transcription

		 Version:   1.1	1995-09-15

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<title page>

			    THE
		       ARROW OF GOLD

			     BY
		       JOSEPH CONRAD



	     Celui qui n'a connu que des hommes
	  polis et raisonnables, ou ne connait pas
	    l'homme, ou ne le connait qu'a demi.
			Caracteres.





<dedication>


			     TO

		       Richard Curle


<text>

		THE ARROW OF GOLD

		FIRST NOTE

  The pages which follow have been extracted from a
pile of manuscript which was apparently meant for the
eye of one woman only. She seems to have been the
writer's childhood's friend. They had parted as children,
or very little more than children. Years passed. Then
something recalled to the woman the companion of her
young days and she wrote to him: ``I have been hearing
of you lately. I know where life has brought you. You
certainly selected your own road. But to us, left behind,
it always looked as if you had struck out into a pathless
desert. We always regarded you as a person that must
be given up for lost. But you have turned up again;
and though we may never see each other, my memory
welcomes you and I confess to you I should like to know
the incidents on the road which has led you to where you
are now.''

  And he answers her: ``I believe you are the only one
now alive who remembers me as a child. I have heard
of you from time to time, but I wonder what sort of person
you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn't dare
put pen to paper. But I don't know. I only remember
that we were great chums. In fact, I chummed with you
even more than with your brothers. But I am like the
pigeon that went away in the fable of the Two Pigeons. 
If I once start to tell you I would want you to feel that
you have been there yourself. I may overtax your
patience with the story of my life so different from yours,
not only in all the facts but altogether in spirit. You
may not understand. You may even be shocked. I say
all this to myself; but I know I shall succumb! I have a
distinct recollection that in the old days, when you were
about fifteen, you always could make me do whatever
you liked.''

  He succumbed. He begins his story for her with the
minute narration of this adventure which took about
twelve months to develop. In the form in which it is
presented here it has been pruned of all allusions to their
common past, of all asides, disquisitions, and explanations
addressed directly to the friend of his childhood. 
And even as it is the whole thing is of considerable length. 
It seems that he had not only a memory but that he also
knew how to remember. But as to that opinions may
differ.

  This, his first great adventure, as he calls it, begins in
Marseilles. It ends there, too. Yet it might have happened
anywhere. This does not mean that the people
concerned could have come together in pure space. The
locality had a definite importance. As to the time, it is
easily fixed by the events at about the middle years of the
seventies, when Don Carlos de Bourbon, encouraged by
the general reaction of all Europe against the excesses of
communistic Republicanism, made his attempt for the
throne of Spain, arms in hand, amongst the hills and
gorges of Guipuzcoa. It is perhaps the last instance of
a Pretender's adventure for a Crown that History will
have to record with the usual grave moral disapproval
tinged by a shamefaced regret for the departing romance. 
Historians are very much like other people.

  However, History has nothing to do with this tale. 
Neither is the moral justification or condemnation of
conduct aimed at here. If anything it is perhaps a little
sympathy that the writer expects for his buried youth,
as he lives it over again at the end of his insignificant
course on this earth. Strange person---yet perhaps not
so very different from ourselves.

  A few words as to certain facts may be added.

  It may seem that he was plunged very abruptly into
this long adventure. But from certain passages (suppressed
here because mixed up with irrelevant matter) it
appears clearly that at the time of the meeting in the
caf<e'>, Mills had already gathered, in various quarters, a
definite view of the eager youth who had been introduced
to him in that ultra-legitimist salon. What Mills
had learned represented him as a young gentleman who
had arrived furnished with proper credentials and who
apparently was doing his best to waste his life in an eccentric
fashion, with a bohemian set (one poet, at least, emerged
out of it later) on one side, and on the other making
friends with the people of the Old Town, pilots, coasters,
sailors, workers of all sorts. He pretended rather absurdly
to be a seaman himself and was already credited
with an ill-defined and vaguely illegal enterprise in the
Gulf of Mexico. At once it occurred to Mills that this
eccentric youngster was the very person for what the legitimist
sympathizers had very much at heart just then:
to organize a supply by sea of arms and ammunition to
the Carlist detachments in the South. It was precisely
to confer on that matter with Do<n~>a Rita that Captain
Blunt had been despatched from Headquarters.

  Mills got in touch with Blunt at once and put the suggestion
before him. The Captain thought this the very
thing. As a matter of fact, on that evening of Carnival,
those two, Mills and Blunt, had been actually looking
everywhere for our man. They had decided that he
should be drawn into the affair if it could be done. Blunt
naturally wanted to see him first. He must have estimated
him a promising person, but, from another point
of view, not dangerous. Thus lightly was the notorious
(and at the same time mysterious) Monsieur George brought
into the world; out of the contact of two minds which
did not give a single thought to his flesh and blood.

  Their purpose explains the intimate tone given to their
first conversation and the sudden introduction of Do<n~>a
Rita's history. Mills, of course, wanted to hear all about
it. As to Captain Blunt I suspect that, at the time, he
was thinking of nothing else. In addition it was Do<n~>a
Rita who would have to do the persuading; for, after all,
such an enterprise with its ugly and desperate risks was not
a trifle to put before a man---however young.

  It cannot be denied that Mills seems to have acted somewhat
unscrupulously. He himself appears to have had
some doubt about it, at a given moment, as they were
driving to the Prado. But perhaps Mills, with his penetration,
understood very well the nature he was dealing with.
He might even have envied it. But it's not my business
to excuse Mills. As to him whom we may regard as Mills'
victim it is obvious that he has never harboured a single
reproachful thought. For him Mills is not to be criticized. 
A remarkable instance of the great power of mere individuality
over the young.



			PART ONE

			I

  Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort
of universal fame and the particular affection of their
citizens. One of such streets is the Cannebi<e`>re, and the
jest: ``If Paris had a Cannebi<e`>re it would be a little
Marseilles'' is the jocular expression of municipal pride.
I, too, I have been under the spell. For me it has been a
street leading into the unknown.

  There was a part of it where one could see as many as
five big caf<e'>s in a resplendent row. That evening I
strolled into one of them. It was by no means full. It
looked deserted, in fact, festal and overlighted, but cheerful.
The wonderful street was distinctly cold (it was an
evening of carnival), I was very idle, and I was feeling a
little lonely. So I went in and sat down.

  The carnival time was drawing to an end. Everybody,
high and low, was anxious to have the last fling. Companies
of masks with linked arms and whooping like red
Indians swept the streets in crazy rushes while gusts of
cold mistral swayed the gas lights as far as the eye could
reach. There was a touch of bedlam in all this.

  Perhaps it was that which made me feel lonely, since I
was neither masked, nor disguised, nor yelling, nor in
any other way in harmony with the bedlam element of
life. But I was not sad. I was merely in a state of sobriety.
I had just returned from my second West Indies
voyage. My eyes were still full of tropical splendour,
my memory of my experiences, lawful and lawless, which
had their charm and their thrill; for they had startled
me a little and had amused me considerably. But they
had left me untouched. Indeed they were other men's
adventures, not mine. Except for a little habit of responsibility
which I had acquired they had not matured me. 
I was as young as before. Inconceivably young---still
beautifully unthinking---infinitely receptive.

  You may believe that I was not thinking of Don Carlos
and his fight for a kingdom. Why should I? You don't
want to think of things which you meet every day in
the newspapers and in conversation. I had paid some
calls since my return and most of my acquaintance were
legitimists and intensely interested in the events of the
frontier of Spain, for political, religious, or romantic
reasons. But I was not interested. Apparently I was
not romantic enough. Or was it that I was even more
romantic than all those good people? The affair seemed
to me commonplace. That man was attending to his
business of a Pretender.

  On the front page of the illustrated paper I saw lying
on a table near me, he looked picturesque enough, seated
on a boulder, a big strong man with a square-cut beard,
his hands resting on the hilt of a cavalry sabre---and all
around him a landscape of savage mountains. He caught
my eye on that spiritedly composed woodcut. (There
were no inane snapshot-reproductions in those days.) It
was the obvious romance for the use of royalists but it
arrested my attention.

  Just then some masks from outside invaded the caf<e'>,
dancing hand in hand in a single file led by a burly man
with a cardboard nose. He gambolled in wildly and
behind him twenty others perhaps, mostly Pierrots and
Pierrettes holding each other by the hand and winding in
and out between the chairs and tables: eyes shining in
the holes of cardboard faces, breasts panting; but all
preserving a mysterious silence.

  They were people of the poorer sort (white calico with
red spots, costumes), but amongst them there was a girl
in a black dress sewn over with gold half moons, very
high in the neck and very short in the skirt. Most of
the ordinary clients of the caf<e'> didn't even look up from
their games or papers. I, being alone and idle, stared
abstractedly. The girl costumed as Night wore a small
black velvet mask, what is called in French a ``_loup._''
What made her daintiness join that obviously rough lot
I can't imagine. Her uncovered mouth and chin suggested
refined prettiness.

  They filed past my table; the Night noticed perhaps
my fixed gaze and throwing her body forward out of the
wriggling chain shot out at me a slender tongue like a
pink dart. I was not prepared for this, not even to the
extent of an appreciative ``_Tr<e`>s jolie,_'' before she wriggled
and hopped away. But having been thus distinguished
I could do no less than follow her with my eyes to the
door where the chain of hands being broken all the masks
were trying to get out at once. Two gentlemen coming
in out of the street stood arrested in the crush. The
Night (it must have been her idiosyncrasy) put her tongue
out at them, too. The taller of the two (he was in evening
clothes under a light wide-open overcoat) with great
presence of mind chucked her under the chin, giving me
the view at the same time of a flash of white teeth in his
dark, lean face. The other man was very different; fair,
with smooth, ruddy cheeks and burly shoulders. He
was wearing a grey suit, obviously bought ready-made,
for it seemed too tight for his powerful frame.

  That man was not altogether a stranger to me. For
the last week or so I had been rather on the look-out for
him in all the public places where in a provincial town
men may expect to meet each other. I saw him for the
first time (wearing that same grey ready-made suit) in a
legitimist drawing-room where, clearly, he was an object
of interest, especially to the women. I had caught his
name as Monsieur Mills. The lady who had introduced
me took the earliest opportunity to murmur into my ear:
``A relation of Lord X.'' (_Un proche parent de Lord X._)
And then she added, casting up her eyes: ``A good friend
of the King.'' Meaning Don Carlos of course,

  I looked at the _proche parent;_ not on account of the
parentage but marvelling at his air of ease in that cumbrous
body and in such tight clothes, too. But presently
the same lady informed me further: ``He has come here
amongst us _un naufrag<e'>._''

  I became then really interested. I had never seen a
shipwrecked person before. All the boyishness in me
was aroused. I considered a shipwreck as an unavoidable
event sooner or later in my future.

  Meantime the man thus distinguished in my eyes glanced
quietly about and never spoke unless addressed directly
by one of the ladies present. There were more than a
dozen people in that drawing-room, mostly women eating
fine pastry and talking passionately. It might have been
a Carlist committee meeting of a particularly fatuous
character. Even my youth and inexperience were aware
of that. And I was by a long way the youngest person in
the room. That quiet Monsieur Mills intimidated me a
little by his age (I suppose he was thirty-five), his massive
tranquillity, his clear, watchful eyes. But the temptation
was too great---and I addressed him impulsively on the
subject of that shipwreck.

  He turned his big fair face towards me with surprise in
his keen glance, which (as though he had seen through
me in an instant and found nothing objectionable) changed
subtly into friendliness. On the matter of the shipwreck
he did not say much. He only told me that it had not
occurred in the Mediterranean, but on the other side of
Southern France---in the Bay of Biscay. ``But this is
hardly the place to enter on a story of that kind,'' he
observed, looking round at the room with a faint smile as
attractive as the rest of his rustic but well-bred personality.

  I expressed my regret. I should have liked to hear all
about it. To this he said that it was not a secret and
that perhaps next time we met. . . .

  ``But where can we meet?'' I cried. ``I don't come
often to this house, you know.''

  ``Where? Why on the Cannebi<e`>re to be sure. Everybody
meets everybody else at least once a day on the
pavement opposite the _Bourse._''

  This was absolutely true. But though I looked for
him on each succeeding day he was nowhere to be seen
at the usual times. The companions of my idle hours
(and all my hours were idle just then) noticed my preoccupation
and chaffed me about it in a rather obvious
way. They wanted to know whether she, whom I expected
to see, was dark or fair; whether that fascination
which kept me on tenterhooks of expectation was one of
my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties: for they
knew I had a footing in both these---shall we say circles?
As to themselves they were the bohemian circle, not very
wide---half a dozen of us led by a sculptor whom we called
Prax for short. My own nick-name was ``Young Ulysses.''
I liked it.

  But chaff or no chaff they would have been surprised to
see me leave them for the burly and sympathetic Mills. 
I was ready to drop any easy company of equals to approach
that interesting man with every mental deference. It
was not precisely because of that shipwreck. He attracted
and interested me the more because he was not to be seen.
The fear that he might have departed suddenly for England---
(or for Spain)---caused me a sort of ridiculous depression
as though I had missed a unique opportunity. And
it was a joyful reaction which emboldened me to signal to
him with a raised arm across that caf<e'>.

  I was abashed immediately afterwards, when I saw
him advance towards my table with his friend. The latter
was eminently elegant. He was exactly like one of those
figures one can see of a fine May evening in the neighbourhood
of the Opera-house in Paris. Very Parisian indeed. 
And yet he struck me as not so perfectly French as he
ought to have been, as if one's nationality were an
accomplishment with varying degrees of excellence. As
to Mills, he was perfectly insular. There could be no
doubt about him. They were both smiling faintly at me. 
The burly Mills attended to the introduction: ``Captain
Blunt.''

  We shook hands. The name didn't tell me much. What
surprised me was that Mills should have remembered
mine so well. I don't want to boast of my modesty but it
seemed to me that two or three days was more than enough
for a man like Mills to forget my very existence. As to
the Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect
correctness of his personality. Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut,
thin, sun-tanned face, pose, all this was so good that
it was saved from the danger of banality only by the
mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn't meet every
day in the south of France and still less in Italy. Another
thing was that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not
look sufficiently professional. That imperfection was
interesting, too.

  You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions
on purpose, but you may take it from a man who has
lived a rough, a very rough life, that it is the subtleties of
personalities, and contacts, and events, that count for
interest and memory---and pretty well nothing else. 
This---you see---is the last evening of that part of my
life in which I did not know that woman. These are
like the last hours of a previous existence. It isn't my
fault that they are associated with nothing better at the
decisive moment than the banal splendours of a gilded
caf<e'> and the bedlamite yells of carnival in the street.

  We three, however (almost complete strangers to each
other), had assumed attitudes of serious amiability round
our table. A waiter approached for orders and it was
then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the absolutely
first thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact
that he was a sufferer from insomnia. In his immovable
way Mills began charging his pipe. I felt extremely embarrassed
all at once, but became positively annoyed
when I saw our Prax enter the caf<e'> in a sort of medi<ae>val
costume very much like what Faust wears in the third
act. I have no doubt it was meant for a purely operatic
Faust. A light mantle floated from his shoulders. He
strode theatrically up to our table and addressing me as
``Young Ulysses'' proposed I should go outside on the
fields of asphalt and help him gather a few marguerites to
decorate a truly infernal supper which was being organized
across the road at the Maison Dor<e'>e---upstairs. With
expostulatory shakes of the head and indignant glances
I called his attention to the fact that I was not alone. 
He stepped back a pace as if astonished by the discovery,
took off his plumed velvet toque with a low obeisance so
that the feathers swept the floor, and swaggered off the
stage with his left hand resting on the hilt of the property
dagger at his belt.

  Meantime the well-connected but rustic Mills had
been busy lighting his briar and the distinguished Captain
sat smiling to himself I was horribly vexed and apologized
for that intrusion, saying that the fellow was a future
great sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been
swallowing lots of night air which had got into his head
apparently.

  Mills peered at me with his friendly but awfully searching
blue eyes through the cloud of smoke he had wreathed
about his big head. The slim, dark Captain's smile took
on an amiable expression. Might he know why I was
addressed as ``Young Ulysses'' by my friend? and
immediately he added the remark with urbane playfulness
that Ulysses was an astute person. Mills did not give me
time for a reply. He struck in: ``That old Greek was
famed as a wanderer---the first historical seaman.'' He
waved his pipe vaguely at me.

  ``Ah! _Vraiment!_'' The polite Captain seemed incredulous
and as if weary. ``Are you a seaman? In what
sense, pray?'' We were talking French and he used the
term _homme de mer._

  Again Mills interfered quietly. ``In the same sense in
which you are a military man.'' (_Homme de guerre._)

  It was then that I heard Captain Blunt produce one
of his striking declarations. He had two of them, and
this was the first.

  ``I live by my sword.''

  It was said in an extraordinary dandified manner which
in conjunction with the matter made me forget my tongue
in my head. I could only stare at him. He added more
naturally: ``2nd Reg. Castille Cavalry.'' Then with
marked stress in Spanish, ``_En las filas legitimas._''

  Mills was heard, unmoved, like Jove in his cloud:
``He's on leave here.''

  ``Of course I don't shout that fact on the housetops,''
the Captain addressed me pointedly, ``any more than
our friend his shipwreck adventure. We must not strain
the toleration of the French authorities too much! It
wouldn't be correct---and not very safe either.''

  I became suddenly extremely delighted with my company.
A man who ``lived by his sword,'' before my
eyes, close at my elbow! So such people did exist in the
world yet! I had not been born too late! And across
the table with his air of watchful, unmoved benevolence,
enough in itself to arouse one's interest, there was the
man with the story of a shipwreck that mustn't be shouted
on housetops. Why?

  I understood very well why, when he told me that he
had joined in the Clyde a small steamer chartered by a
relative of his, ``a very wealthy man,'' he observed (probably
Lord X, I thought), to carry arms and other supplies
to the Carlist army. And it was not a shipwreck
in the ordinary sense. Everything went perfectly well
to the last moment when suddenly the _Numancia_ (a
Republican ironclad) had appeared and chased them
ashore on the French coast below Bayonne, In a few
words, but with evident appreciation of the adventure,
Mills described to us how he swam to the beach clad simply
in a money belt and a pair of trousers. Shells were falling
all round till a tiny French gunboat came out of Bayonne
and shooed the _Numancia_ away out of territorial waters.

  He was very amusing and I was fascinated by the
mental picture of that tranquil man rolling in the surf
and emerging breathless, in the costume you know, on
the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of
war material. However, they had never arrested or expelled
him, since he was there before my eyes. But how
and why did he get so far from the scene of his sea adventure
was an interesting question. And I put it to him with
most na<i:>ve indiscretion which did not shock him visibly. 
He told me that the ship being only stranded, not sunk,
the contraband cargo aboard was doubtless in good condition.
The French custom-house men were guarding the
wreck. If their vigilance could be---h'm---removed by
some means, or even merely reduced, a lot of these rifles
and cartridges could be taken off quietly at night by certain
Spanish fishing boats. In fact, salved for the Carlists, after
all. He thought it could be done. . . .

  I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly
quiet nights (rare on that coast) it could certainly
be done.

  Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements. It was the
highly inconvenient zeal of the French custom-house
people that had to be dealt with in some way.

  ``Heavens!'' I cried, astonished. ``You can't bribe
the French Customs. This isn't a South-American republic.''

  ``Is it a republic?'' he murmured, very absorbed in
smoking his wooden pipe.

  ``Well, isn't it?''

  He murmured again, ``Oh, so little.'' At this I laughed,
and a faintly humorous expression passed over Mills' face.
No. Bribes were out of the question, he admitted. But
there were many legitimist sympathies in Paris. A proper
person could set them in motion and a mere hint from high
quarters to the officials on the spot not to worry over-much
about that wreck. . . .

  What was most amusing was the cool, reasonable tone
of this amazing project. Mr. Blunt sat by very detached,
his eyes roamed here and there all over the caf<e'>; and it
was while looking upward at the pink foot of a fleshy and
very much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted
on the ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian
style that he let fall casually the words, ``She will manage
it for you quite easily.''

  ``Every Carlist agent in Bayonne assured me of that,''
said Mr. Mills. ``I would have gone straight to Paris
only I was told she had fled here for a rest; tired, discontented.
Not a very encouraging report.''

  ``These flights are well known,'' muttered Mr. Blunt.
``You shall see her all right.''

  ``Yes. They told me that you . . .''

  I broke in: ``You mean to say that you expect a
woman to arrange that sort of thing for you?''

  ``A trifle, for her,'' Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently.

  ``At that sort of thing women are best. They have less
scruples.''

  ``More audacity,'' interjected Mr. Mills almost in a
whisper.

  Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: ``You see,''
he addressed me in a most refined tone, ``a mere man
may suddenly find himself being kicked down the stairs.''

  I don't know why I should have felt shocked by that
statement. It could not be because it was untrue. The
other did not give me time to offer any remark. He inquired
with extreme politeness what did I know of South
American republics? I confessed that I knew very little
of them. Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a
look-in here and there; and amongst others I had a few
days in Haiti which was of course unique, being a negro
republic. On this Captain Blunt began to talk of negroes
at large. He talked of them with knowledge, intelligence,
and a sort of contemptuous affection. He generalized,
he particularized about the blacks; he told anecdotes. 
I was interested, a little incredulous, and considerably
surprised. What could this man with such a boulevardier
exterior that he looked positively like an exile in a provincial
town, and with his drawing-room manner---what
could he know of negroes?

  Mills, sitting silent with his air of watchful intelligence,
seemed to read my thoughts, waved his pipe slightly and
explained: ``The Captain is from South Carolina.''

  ``Oh,'' I murmured, and then after the slightest of pauses
I heard the second of Mr. J. K. Blunt's declarations.

  ``Yes,'' he said. ``_Je suis Am<e'>ricain, catholique et gentilhomme,_''
in a tone contrasting so strongly with the smile,
which, as it were, underlined the uttered words, that I was
at a loss whether to return the smile in kind or acknowledge
the words with a grave little bow. Of course I did
neither and there fell on us an odd, equivocal silence. It
marked our final abandonment of the French language,
I was the one to speak first, proposing that my companions
should sup with me, not across the way, which would
be riotous with more than one ``infernal'' supper, but
in another much more select establishment in a side
street away from the Cannebi<e`>re. It flattered my vanity
a little to be able to say that I had a corner table always
reserved in the Salon des Palmiers. otherwise Salon Blanc,
where the atmosphere was legitimist and extremely
decorous besides---even in Carnival time. ``Nine tenths
of the people there,'' I said, ``would be of your political
opinions, if that's an inducement. Come along. Let's be
festive,'' I encouraged them.

  I didn't feel particularly festive, What I wanted was
to remain in my company and break an inexplicable feeling
of constraint of which I was aware. Mills looked at me
steadily with a faint, kind smile.

  ``No,'' said Blunt. ``Why should we go there? They
will be only turning us out in the small hours, to go home
and face insomnia. Can you imagine anything more
disgusting?''

  He was smiling all the time, but his deep-set eyes did
not lend themselves to the expression of whimsical politeness
which he tried to achieve. He had another suggestion
to offer. Why shouldn't we adjourn to his rooms?
He had there materials for a dish of his own invention
for which he was famous all along the line of the Royal
Cavalry outposts, and he would cook it for us. There
were also a few bottles of some white wine, quite possible,
which we could drink out of Venetian cut-glass goblets. A
_bivouac_ feast, in fact. And he wouldn't turn us out in
the small hours. Not he. He couldn't sleep.

  Need I say I was fascinated by the idea? Well, yes. 
But somehow I hesitated and looked towards Mills, so
much my senior. He got up without a word. This was
decisive; for no obscure premonition, and of something
indefinite at that, could stand against the example of his
tranquil personality.


			II

  The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our
eyes, narrow, silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps
in it to disclose its most striking feature a quantity
of flag-poles sticking out above many of its closed portals. 
It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to Mr.
Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the
flags of all nations almost---except his own. (The U. S.
consulate was on the other side of the town.) He mumbled
through his teeth that he took good care to keep clear of
his own consulate.

  ``Are you afraid of the consul's dog?'' I asked jocularly.
The consul's dog weighed about a pound and a
half and was known to the whole town as exhibited on
the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but
mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the
Prado.

  But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in
my ear: ``They are all Yankees there.''

  I murmured a confused ``Of course.''

  Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never
been aware before that the Civil War in America was
not printed matter but a fact only about ten years old. 
Of course. He was a South Carolinian gentleman. I
was a little ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime,
looking like the conventional conception of a fashionable
reveller, with his opera-hat pushed off his forehead, Captain
Blunt was having some slight difficulty with his latch-key;
for the house before which we had stopped was not one of
those many-storied houses that made up the greater part
of the street. It had only one row of windows above the
ground floor. Dead walls abutting on to it indicated that
it had a garden. Its dark front presented no marked
architectural character, and in the flickering light of a
street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down
in the world. The greater then was my surprise to enter
a hall paved in black and white marble and in its dimness
appearing of palatial proportions. Mr. Blunt did not turn
up the small solitary gas-jet, but led the way across the
black and white pavement past the end of the staircase,
past a door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy bronze
handle. It gave access to his rooms he said; but he took us
straight on to the studio at the end of the passage.

  It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of
a lean-to to the garden side of the house. A large lamp
was burning brightly there. The floor was of mere flagstones
but the few rugs scattered about though extremely
worn were very costly. There was also there a beautiful
sofa upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan
with many cushions, some splendid arm-chairs of various
shapes (but all very shabby), a round table, and in the midst
of these fine things a small common iron stove. Somebody
must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and
the warmth of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching
cold blasts of mistral outside.

  Mills without a word flung himself on the divan and,
propped on his arm, gazed thoughtfully at a distant corner
where in the shadow of a monumental carved wardrobe an
articulated dummy without head or hands but with beautifully
shaped limbs composed in a shrinking attitude, seemed
to be embarrassed by his stare.

  As we sat enjoying the _bivouac_ hospitality (the dish
was really excellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket
still looked the accomplished man-about-town) my eyes
kept on straying towards that corner. Blunt noticed
this and remarked that I seemed to be attracted by the
Empress.

  ``It's disagreeable,'' I said. ``It seems to lurk there
like a shy skeleton at the feast. But why do you give
the name of Empress to that dummy?''

  ``Because it sat for days and days in the robes of a
Byzantine Empress to a painter. . . . I wonder where
he discovered these priceless stuffs. . . . You knew him,
I believe?''

  Mills lowered his head slowly, then tossed down his
throat some wine out of a Venetian goblet.

  ``This house is full of costly objects. So are all his
other houses, so is his place in Paris---that mysterious
Pavilion hidden away in Passy somewhere.''

  Mills knew the Pavilion. The wine had, I suppose,
loosened his tongue. Blunt, too, lost something of his
reserve. From their talk I gathered the notion of an eccentric
personality, a man of great wealth, not so much
solitary as difficult of access, a collector of fine things, a
painter known only to very few people and not at all
to the public market. But as meantime I had been
emptying my Venetian goblet with a certain regularity
(the amount of heat given out by that iron stove was
amazing; it parched one's throat, and the straw-coloured
wine didn't seem much stronger than so much pleasantly
flavoured water) the voices and the impressions they conveyed
acquired something fantastic to my mind. Suddenly
I perceived that Mills was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. 
I had not noticed him taking off his coat. Blunt had
unbuttoned his shabby jacket, exposing a lot of starched
shirt-front with the white tie under his dark shaved chin. 
He had a strange air of insolence---or so it seemed to me. 
I addressed him much louder than I intended really.

  ``Did you know that extraordinary man?''

  ``To know him personally one had to be either very distinguished
or very lucky. Mr. Mills here . . .''

  ``Yes, I have been lucky,'' Mills struck in. ``It was
my cousin who was distinguished. That's how I managed
to enter his house in Paris---it was called the Pavilion---
twice.''

  ``And saw Do<n~>a Rita twice, too?'' asked Blunt with
an indefinite smile and a marked emphasis. Mills was
also emphatic in his reply but with a serious face.

  ``I am not an easy enthusiast where women are concerned,
but she was without doubt the most admirable
find of his amongst all the priceless items he had accumulated
in that house---the most admirable. . . .''

  ``Ah! But, you see, of all the objects there she was the
only one that was alive,'' pointed out Blunt with the
slightest possible flavour of sarcasm.

  ``Immensely so,'' affirmed Mills. ``Not because she
was restless, indeed she hardly ever moved from that
couch between the windows---you know.''

  ``No. I don't know. I've never been in there,'' announced
Blunt with that flash of white teeth so strangely
without any character of its own that it was merely disturbing.

  ``But she radiated life,'' continued Mills. ``She had
plenty of it, and it had a quality. My cousin and Henry
All<e`>gre had a lot to say to each other and so I was free
to talk to her. At the second visit we were like old
friends, which was absurd considering that all the chances
were that we would never meet again in this world or in
the next. I am not meddling with theology but it seems
to me that in the Elysian fields she'll have her place in a
very special company.''

  All this in a sympathetic voice and in his unmoved
manner. Blunt produced another disturbing white flash
and muttered:

  ``I should say mixed.'' Then louder: ``As for
instance . . .''

  ``As for instance Cleopatra,'' answered Mills quietly. 
He added after a pause: ``Who was not exactly pretty.''

  ``I should have thought rather a La Valli<e`>re,'' Blunt
dropped with an indifference of which one did not know
what to make. He may have begun to be bored with
the subject. But it may have been put on, for the whole
personality was not clearly definable. I, however, was
not indifferent. A woman is always an interesting subject
and I was thoroughly awake to that interest. Mills
pondered for a while with a sort of dispassionate benevolence,
at last:

  ``Yes, Do<n~>a Rita as far as I know her is so varied in
her simplicity that even that is possible,'' he said. ``Yes. 
A romantic resigned La Valli<e`>re . . . who had a big mouth.''

  I felt moved to make myself heard.

  ``Did you know La Valli<e`>re, too?'' I asked impertinently.

  Mills only smiled at me. ``No. I am not quite so old
as that,'' he said. ``But it's not very difficult to know
facts of that kind about a historical personage. There
were some ribald verses made at the time, and Louis
XIV was congratulated on the possession---I really don't
remember how it goes---on the possession of

	``. . . de ce bec amoureux
	  Qui d'une oreille <a`> l'autre va,
	      Tra l<a`>, l<a`>.

or something of the sort. It needn't be from ear to ear,
but it's a fact that a big mouth is often a sign of a certain
generosity of mind and feeling. Young man, beware
of women with small mouths. Beware of the others, too,
of course; but a small mouth is a fatal sign. Well, the
royalist sympathizers can't charge Do<n~>a Rita with any
lack of generosity from what I hear. Why should I
judge her? I have known her for, say, six hours altogether.
It was enough to feel the seduction of her native
intelligence and of her splendid physique. And all that
was brought home to me so quickly,'' he concluded,
``because she had what some Frenchman has called the
`terrible gift of familiarity.' ''

  Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent.

  ``Yes!'' Mills' thoughts were still dwelling in the past.
``And when saying good-bye she could put in an instant
an immense distance between herself and you. A slight
stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of the physiognomy:
it was like being dismissed by a person born in
the purple. Even if she did offer you her hand---as she
did to me---it was as if across a broad river. Trick of
manner or a bit of truth peeping out? Perhaps she's
really one of those inaccessible beings. What do you
think, Blunt?''

  It was a direct question which for some reason (as if
my range of sensitiveness had been increased already)
displeased or rather disturbed me strangely. Blunt
seemed not to have heard it. But after a while he turned
to me.

  ``That thick man,'' he said in a tone of perfect urbanity,
``is as fine as a needle. All these statements about
the seduction and then this final doubt expressed after only
two visits which could not have included more than six
hours altogether and this some three years ago! But it
is Henry All<e`>gre that you should ask this question, Mr.
Mills.''

  ``I haven't the secret of raising the dead,'' answered
Mills good humouredly. ``And if I had I would hesitate. 
It would seem such a liberty to take with a person one
had known so slightly in life.''

  ``And yet Henry All<e`>gre is the only person to ask
about her, after all this uninterrupted companionship of
years, ever since he discovered her; all the time, every
breathing moment of it, till, literally, his very last breath. 
I don't mean to say she nursed him. He had his confidential
man for that. He couldn't bear women about his 
person. But then apparently he couldn't bear this one
out of his sight. She's the only woman who ever sat to
him, for he would never suffer a model inside his house. 
That's why the `Girl in the Hat' and the `Byzantine
Empress' have that family air, though neither of them
is really a likeness of Do<n~>a Rita. . . . You know my
mother?''

  Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile
vanished from his lips. Blunt's eyes were fastened on
the very centre of his empty plate.

  ``Then perhaps you know my mother's artistic and literary
associations,'' Blunt went on in a subtly changed
tone. ``My mother has been writing verse since she was
a girl of fifteen. She's still writing verse. She's still
fifteen---a spoiled girl of genius. So she requested one
of her poet friends---no less than Versoy himself---to
arrange for a visit to Henry All<e`>gre's house. At first he
thought he hadn't heard aright. You must know that
for my mother a man that doesn't jump out of his skin
for any woman's caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps
you do know? . . .''

  Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who
had raised his eyes from his plate to look at him, started
afresh with great deliberation.

  ``She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My
mother's exquisitely absurd. You understand that all
these painters, poets, art collectors (and dealers in bric-<a`>-brac,
he interjected through his teeth) of my mother
are not in my way; but Versoy lives more like a man of
the world. One day I met him at the fencing school. 
He was furious. He asked me to tell my mother that
this was the last effort of his chivalry. The jobs she
gave him to do were too difficult. But I daresay he had
been pleased enough to show the influence he had in that
quarter. He knew my mother would tell the world's
wife all about it. He's a spiteful, gingery little wretch. 
The top of his head shines like a billiard ball. I believe
he polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course
they didn't get further than the big drawing-room on
the first floor, an enormous drawing-room with three
pairs of columns in the middle. The double doors on the
top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if for
a visit from royalty. You can picture to yourself my
mother, with her white hair done in some 18th century
fashion and her sparkling black eyes, penetrating into
those splendours attended by a sort of bald-headed, vexed
squirrel---and Henry All<e`>gre coming forward to meet
them like a severe prince with the face of a tombstone
Crusader, big white hands, muffled silken voice, half-shut
eyes, as if looking down at them from a balcony. You
remember that trick of his, Mills?''

  Mills emitted an enormous cloud of smoke out of his
distended cheeks.

  ``I daresay he was furious, too,'' Blunt continued dispassionately.
``But he was extremely civil. He showed
her all the `treasures' in the room, ivories, enamels,
miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities from Japan, from
India, from Timbuctoo . . . for all I know. . . . He
pushed his condescension so far as to have the `Girl
in the Hat' brought down into the drawing-room---
half length, unframed. They put her on a chair for my
mother to look at. The `Byzantine Empress' was already
there, hung on the end wall---full length, gold
frame weighing half a ton. My mother first overwhelms
the `Master' with thanks, and then absorbs herself in
the adoration of the `Girl in the Hat.' Then she
sighs out `It should be called Diaphan<e'>it<e'>, if there
is such a word. Ah! This is the last expression of
modernity!' She puts up suddenly her face-<a`>-main
and looks towards the end wall. `And that---Byzantium
itself! Who was she, this sullen and beautiful
Empress?'

  `` `The one I had in my mind was Theodosia!' All<e`>gre
consented to answer. `Originally a slave girl---from
somewhere.'

  ``My mother can be marvellously indiscreet when the
whim takes her. She finds nothing better to do than to
ask the `Master' why he took his inspiration for those
two faces from the same model. No doubt she was
proud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her. 
All<e`>gre, however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence;
but he answered in his silkiest tones

  `` `Perhaps it is because I saw in that woman something
of the women of all time.'

  ``My mother might have guessed that she was on thin
ice there. She is extremely intelligent. Moreover, she
ought to have known. But women can be miraculously
dense sometimes. So she exclaims, `Then she is a wonder!'
And with some notion of being complimentary
goes on to say that only the eyes of the discoverer of so
many wonders of art could have discovered something so
marvellous in life. I suppose All<e`>gre lost his temper altogether
then; or perhaps he only wanted to pay my
mother out, for all these `Masters' she had been throwing
at his head for the last two hours. He insinuates
with the utmost politeness:

  `` `As you are honouring my poor collection with a visit
you may like to judge for yourself as to the inspiration of
these two pictures. She is upstairs changing her dress
after our morning ride. But she wouldn't be very long. 
She might be a little surprised at first to be called down
like this, but with a few words of preparation and purely
as a matter of art . . .'

  ``There were never two people more taken aback. Versoy
himself confesses that he dropped his tall hat with a
crash. I am a dutiful son, I hope, but I must say I should
have liked to have seen the retreat down the great staircase.
Ha! Ha! Ha!''

  He laughed most undutifully and then his face twitched
grimly.

  ``That implacable brute All<e`>gre followed them down
ceremoniously and put my mother into the fiacre at the
door with the greatest deference. He didn't open his lips
though, and made a great bow as the fiacre drove away. 
My mother didn't recover from her consternation for
three days. I lunch with her almost daily and I couldn't
imagine what was the matter. Then one day . . .''

  He glanced round the table, jumped up and with a
word of excuse left the studio by a small door in a corner.
This startled me into the consciousness that I had
been as if I had not existed for these two men. With his
elbows propped on the table Mills had his hands in front
of his face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now
and then a puff of smoke, staring stolidly across the room.

  I was moved to ask in a whisper:

  ``Do you know him well?''

  ``I don't know what he is driving at,'' he answered
drily. ``But as to his mother she is not as volatile as all
that. I suspect it was business. It may have been a
deep plot to get a picture out of All<e`>gre for somebody. 
My cousin as likely as not. Or simply to discover what
he had. The Blunts lost all their property and in Paris
there are various ways of making a little money, without
actually breaking anything. Not even the law. And
Mrs. Blunt really had a position once---in the days of
the Second Empire---and so . . .''

  I listened open-mouthed to these things into which my
West-Indian experiences could not have given me an insight.
But Mills checked himself and ended in a changed
tone.

  ``It's not easy to know what she would be at, either,
in any given instance. For the rest, spotlessly honourable.
A delightful, aristocratic old lady. Only poor.''

  A bump at the door silenced him and immediately Mr.
John Blunt, Captain of Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity,
first-rate cook (as to one dish at least), and generous
host, entered clutching the necks of four more bottles
between the fingers of his hand.

  ``I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot,'' he remarked
casually. But even I, with all my innocence, never for a
moment believed he had stumbled accidentally. During
the uncorking and the filling up of glasses a profound
silence reigned; but neither of us took it seriously---any
more than his stumble.

  ``One day,'' he went on again in that curiously flavoured
voice of his, ``my mother took a heroic decision
and made up her mind to get up in the middle of
the night. You must understand my mother's phraseology.
It meant that she would be up and dressed by
nine o'clock. This time it was not Versoy that was
commanded for attendance, but I. You may imagine
how delighted I was. . . .''

  It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing
himself exclusively to Mills: Mills the mind, even more
than Mills the man. It was as if Mills represented something
initiated and to be reckoned with. I, of course,
could have no such pretensions. If I represented anything
it was a perfect freshness of sensations and a refreshing
ignorance, not so much of what life may give one (as to
that I had some ideas at least) but of what it really contains.
I knew very well that I was utterly insignificant
in these men's eyes. Yet my attention was not checked
by that knowledge. It's true they were talking of a woman,
but I was yet at the age when this subject by itself is not
of overwhelming interest. My imagination would have
been more stimulated probably by the adventures and
fortunes of a man. What kept my interest from flagging
was Mr. Blunt himself. The play of the white gleams
of his smile round the suspicion of grimness of his tone
fascinated me like a moral incongruity.

  So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does
feel sometimes as if the need of sleep were a mere weakness
of a distant old age, I kept easily awake; and in my
freshness I was kept amused by the contrast of personalities,
of the disclosed facts and moral outlook with the
rough initiations of my West-Indian experience. And all
these things were dominated by a feminine figure which
to my imagination had only a floating outline, now invested
with the grace of girlhood, now with the prestige
of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. 
For these two men had _seen_ her, while to me she was
only being ``presented,'' elusively, in vanishing words, in
the shifting tones of an unfamiliar voice.

  She was being presented to me now in the Bois de
Boulogne at the early hour of the ultra-fashionable world
(so I understood), on a light bay ``bit of blood'' attended
on the off side by that Henry All<e`>gre mounted on a
dark brown powerful weight carrier; and on the other by
one of All<e`>gre's acquaintances (the man had no real
friends), distinguished frequenters of that mysterious
Pavilion. And so that side of the frame in which that
woman appeared to one down the perspective of the
great All<e'>e was not permanent. That morning when Mr.
Blunt had to escort his mother there for the gratification
of her irresistible curiosity (of which he highly disapproved)
there appeared in succession, at that woman's or
girl's bridle-hand, a cavalry general in red breeches, on
whom she was smiling; a rising politician in a grey suit,
who talked to her with great animation but left her side
abruptly to join a personage in a red fez and mounted on
a white horse; and then, some time afterwards, the vexed
Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother (though I really
couldn't see where the harm was) had one more chance
of a good stare. The third party that time was the Royal
Pretender (All<e`>gre had been painting his portrait lately),
whose hearty, sonorous laugh was heard long before the
mounted trio came riding very slowly abreast of the
Blunts. There was colour in the girl's face. She was
not laughing. Her expression was serious and her eyes
thoughtfully downcast. Blunt admitted that on that occasion
the charm, brilliance, and force of her personality was
adequately framed between those magnificently mounted,
paladin-like attendants, one older than the other but the
two composing together admirably in the different stages of
their manhood. Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry
All<e`>gre so close. All<e`>gre was riding nearest to the path
on which Blunt was dutifully giving his arm to his mother
(they had got out of their fiacre) and wondering if that
confounded fellow would have the impudence to take off his
hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn't notice. All<e`>gre
was not a man of wandering glances. There were silver
hairs in his beard but he looked as solid as a statue
Less than three months afterwards he was gone.

  ``What was it?'' asked Mills, who had not changed his
pose for a very long time.

  ``Oh, an accident. But he lingered. They were on
their way to Corsica. A yearly pilgrimage. Sentimental
perhaps. It was to Corsica that he carried her off---I
mean first of all.''

  There was the slightest contraction of Mr. Blunt's
facial muscles. Very slight; but I, staring at the
narrator after the manner of all simple souls, noticed
it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have
been mental. There was also a suggestion of effort
before he went on: ``I suppose you know how he got
hold of her?'' in a tone of case which was astonishingly
ill-assumed for such a worldly, self-controlled, drawing-room
person.

  Mills changed his attitude to look at him fixedly for a
moment. Then he leaned back in his chair and with interest---
I don't mean curiosity, I mean interest: ``Does
anybody know besides the two parties concerned?'' he
asked, with something as it were renewed (or was it
refreshed?) in his unmoved quietness. ``I ask because
one has never heard any tales. I remember one evening
in a restaurant seeing a man come in with a lady---a
beautiful lady---very particularly beautiful, as though
she had been stolen out of Mahomet's paradise. With
Do<n~>a Rita it can't be anything as definite as that. But
speaking of her in the same strain, I've always felt that
she looked as though All<e`>gre had caught her in the precincts
of some temple . . . in the mountains.''

  I was delighted. I had never heard before a woman
spoken about in that way, a real live woman that is, not
a woman in a book. For this was no poetry and yet it
seemed to put her in the category of visions. And I
would have lost myself in it if Mr. Blunt had not, most
unexpectedly, addressed himself to me.

  ``I told you that man was as fine as a needle.'' . . .
And then to Mills: ``Out of a temple? We know what
that means.'' His dark eyes flashed: ``And must it be
really in the mountains?'' he added.

  ``Or in a desert,'' conceded Mills, ``if you prefer that.
There have been temples in deserts, you know.''

  Blunt had calmed down suddenly and assumed a nonchalant
pose.

  ``As a matter of fact, Henry All<e`>gre caught her very
early one morning in his own old garden full of thrushes
and other small birds. She was sitting on a stone, a fragment
of some old balustrade, with her feet in the damp
grass, and reading a tattered book of some kind. She
had on a short, black, two-penny frock (_une petite robe de
deux sous_) and there was a hole in one of her stockings. 
She raised her eyes and saw him looking down at her
thoughtfully over that ambrosian beard of his, like Jove
at a mortal. They exchanged a good long stare, for at
first she was too startled to move; and then he murmured,
``_Restez donc._'' She lowered her eyes again on her
book and after a while heard him walk away on the
path. Her heart thumped while she listened to the
little birds filling the air with their noise. She was not
frightened. I am telling you this positively because she
has told me the tale herself. What better authority can
you have . . .?'' Blunt paused.

  ``That's true. She's not the sort of person to lie about
her own sensations,'' murmured Mills above his clasped
hands.

  ``Nothing can escape his penetration,'' Blunt remarked
to me with that equivocal urbanity which made me always
feel uncomfortable on Mills' account. ``Positively
nothing.'' He turned to Mills again. ``After some minutes
of immobility---she told me---she arose from her
stone and walked slowly on the track of that apparition. 
All<e`>gre was nowhere to be seen by that time. Under the
gateway of the extremely ugly tenement house, which
hides the Pavilion and the garden from the street, the
wife of the porter was waiting with her arms akimbo. 
At once she cried out to Rita: `You were caught by our
gentleman.'

  ``As a matter of fact, that old woman, being a friend of
Rita's aunt, allowed the girl to come into the garden
whenever All<e`>gre was away. But All<e`>gre's goings and
comings were sudden and unannounced; and that morning,
Rita, crossing the narrow, thronged street, had
slipped in through the gateway in ignorance of All<e`>gre's
return and unseen by the porter's wife.

  ``The child, she was but little more than that then,
expressed her regret of having perhaps got the kind porter's
wife into trouble.

  ``The old woman said with a peculiar smile: `Your
face is not of the sort that gets other people into trouble.
My gentleman wasn't angry. He says you may come in
any morning you like.'

  ``Rita, without saying anything to this, crossed the
street back again to the warehouse full of oranges where
she spent most of her waking hours. Her dreaming,
empty, idle, thoughtless, unperturbed hours, she calls
them. She crossed the street with a hole in her stocking.
She had a hole in her stocking not because her
uncle and aunt were poor (they had around them never
less than eight thousand oranges, mostly in cases) but
because she was then careless and untidy and totally unconscious
of her personal appearance. She told me herself
that she was not even conscious then of her personal
existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight life
of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange
merchant, a Basque peasant, to whom her other uncle,
the great man of the family, the priest of some parish in
the hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at the age of thirteen
or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasant
stock, you know. This is the true origin of the `Girl in
the Hat' and of the `Byzantine Empress' which excited
my dear mother so much; of the mysterious girl that the
privileged personalities great in art, in letters, in polities,
or simply in the world, could see on the big sofa during
the gatherings in All<e`>gre's exclusive Pavilion: the Do<n~>a
Rita of their respectful addresses, manifest and mysterious,
like an object of art from some unknown period; the
Do<n~>a Rita of the initiated Paris. Do<n~>a Rita and nothing
more---unique and indefinable.'' He stopped with
a disagreeable smile.

  ``And of peasant stock?'' I exclaimed in the strangely
conscious silence that fell between Mills and Blunt.

  ``Oh! All these Basques have been ennobled by Don
Sanche II,'' said Captain Blunt moodily. ``You see coats
of arms carved over the doorways of the most miserable
_caserios._ As far as that goes she's Do<n~>a Rita right enough
whatever else she is or is not in herself or in the eyes of
others. In your eyes, for instance, Mills. Eh?''

  For a time Mills preserved that conscious silence.

  ``Why think about it at all?'' he murmured coldly at
last. ``A strange bird is hatched sometimes in a nest in
an unaccountable way and then the fate of such a bird
is bound to be ill-defined, uncertain, questionable. And
so that is how Henry All<e`>gre saw her first? And what
happened next?''

  ``What happened next?'' repeated Mr. Blunt, with an
affected surprise in his tone. ``Is it necessary to ask
that question ? If you had asked _how_ the next happened. . . .
But as you may imagine she hasn't
told me anything about that. She didn't,'' he continued
with polite sarcasm, ``enlarge upon the facts. That confounded
All<e`>gre, with his impudent assumption of princely
airs, must have (I shouldn't wonder) made the fact of
his notice appear as a sort of favour dropped from Olympus.
I really can't tell how the minds and the imaginations
of such aunts and uncles are affected by such rare
visitations. Mythology may give us a hint. There is
the story of Danae, for instance.''

  ``There is,'' remarked Mills calmly, ``but I don't remember
any aunt or uncle in that connection.''

  ``And there are also certain stories of the discovery
and acquisition of some unique objects of art. The sly
approaches, the astute negotiations, the lying and the
circumventing . . . for the love of beauty, you know.''

  With his dark face and with the perpetual smiles playing
about his grimness, Mr. Blunt appeared to me positively
satanic. Mills' hand was toying absently with an empty
glass. Again they had forgotten my existence altogether.

  ``I don't know how an object of art would feel,'' went
on Blunt, in an unexpectedly grating voice, which, however,
recovered its tone immediately. ``I don't know. 
But I do know that Rita herself was not a Danae, never,
not at any time of her life. She didn't mind the holes in
her stockings. She wouldn't mind holes in her stockings
now. . . . That is if she manages to keep any stockings
at all,'' he added, with a sort of suppressed fury so
funnily unexpected that I would have burst into a laugh
if I hadn't been lost in astonishment of the simplest kind.

  ``No---really!'' There was a flash of interest from
the quiet Mills.

  ``Yes, really,'' Blunt nodded and knitted his brows
very devilishly indeed. ``She may yet be left without a
single pair of stockings.''

  ``The world's a thief,'' declared Mills, with the utmost
composure. ``It wouldn't mind robbing a lonely traveller.''

  ``He is so subtle.'' Blunt remembered my existence
for the purpose of that remark and as usual it made me
very uncomfortable. ``Perfectly true. A lonely traveller. 
They are all in the scramble from the lowest to the
highest. Heavens! What a gang! There was even an
Archbishop in it.''

  ``_Vous plaisantez,_'' said Mills, but without any marked
show of incredulity.

  ``I joke very seldom,'' Blunt protested earnestly. 
``That's why I haven't mentioned His Majesty---whom
God preserve. That would have been an exaggeration. . . .
However, the end is not yet. We were
talking about the beginning. I have heard that some
dealers in fine objects, quite mercenary people of course
(my mother has an experience in that world), show sometimes
an astonishing reluctance to part with some specimens,
even at a good price. It must be very funny. It's
just possible that the uncle and the aunt have been rolling
in tears on the floor, amongst their oranges, or beating their
heads against the walls from rage and despair. But I
doubt it. And in any case All<e`>gre is not the sort of person
that gets into any vulgar trouble. And it's just possible
that those people stood open-mouthed at all that
magnificence. They weren't poor, you know; therefore it
wasn't incumbent on them to be honest. They are still
there in the old respectable warehouse, I understand. 
They have kept their position in their _quartier,_ I believe. 
But they didn't keep their niece. It might have been an
act of sacrifice! For I seem to remember hearing that
after attending for a while some school round the corner
the child had been set to keep the books of that orange
business. However it might have been, the first fact in
Rita's and All<e`>gre's common history is a journey to Italy,
and then to Corsica. You know All<e`>gre had a house in
Corsica somewhere. She has it now as she has everything
he ever had; and that Corsican palace is the portion
that will stick the longest to Do<n~>a Rita, I imagine. 
Who would want to buy a place like that? I suppose
nobody would take it for a gift. The fellow was having
houses built all over the place. This very house where
we are sitting belonged to him. Do<n~>a Rita has given it
to her sister, I understand. Or at any rate the sister
runs it. She is my landlady . . .''

  ``Her sister here!'' I exclaimed. ``Her sister!''

  Blunt turned to me politely, but only for a long mute
gaze. His eyes were in deep shadow and it struck me for
the first time then that there was something fatal in that
man's aspect as soon as he fell silent. I think the effect
was purely physical, but in consequence whatever he said
seemed inadequate and as if produced by a commonplace,
if uneasy, soul.

  ``Do<n~>a Rita brought her down from her mountains on
purpose. She is asleep somewhere in this house, in one
of the vacant rooms. She lets them, you know, at extortionate
prices, that is, if people will pay them, for she is
easily intimidated. You see, she has never seen such an
enormous town before in her life, nor yet so many strange
people. She has been keeping house for the uncle-priest
in some mountain gorge for years and years. It's extraordinary
he should have let her go. There is something
mysterious there, some reason or other. It's either theology
or Family. The saintly uncle in his wild parish
would know nothing of any other reasons. She wears a
rosary at her waist. Directly she had seen some real
money she developed a love of it. If you stay with me
long enough, and I hope you will (I really can't sleep),
you will see her going out to mass at half-past six; but
there is nothing remarkable in her; just a peasant woman
of thirty-four or so. A rustic nun. . . .''

  I may as well say at once that we didn't stay as long
as that. It was not that morning that I saw for the first
time Therese of the whispering lips and downcast eyes
slipping out to an early mass from the house of iniquity
into the early winter murk of the city of perdition, in a
world steeped in sin. No. It was not on that morning
that I saw Do<n~>a Rita's incredible sister with her brown,
dry face, her gliding motion, and her really nun-like
dress, with a black handkerchief enfolding her head
tightly, with the two pointed ends hanging down her
back. Yes, nun-like enough. And yet not altogether. 
People would have turned round after her if those dartings
out to the half-past six mass hadn't been the only
occasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. 
She was frightened of the streets, but in a particular
way, not as if of a danger but as if of a contamination.
Yet she didn't fly back to her mountains because
at bottom she had an indomitable character, a peasant
tenacity of purpose, predatory instincts. . . .

  No, we didn't remain long enough with Mr. Blunt to
see even as much as her back glide out of the house on
her prayerful errand. She was prayerful. She was terrible.
Her one-idead peasant mind was as inaccessible as
a closed iron safe. She was fatal. . . . It's perfectly
ridiculous to confess that they all seem fatal to me
now; but writing to you like this in all sincerity I don't
mind appearing ridiculous. I suppose fatality must be
expressed, embodied, like other forces of this earth; and
if so why not in such people as well as in other more
glorious or more frightful figures?

  We remained, however, long enough to let Mr. Blunt's
half-hidden acrimony develop itself or prey on itself in
further talk about the man All<e`>gre and the girl Rita. 
Mr. Blunt, still addressing Mills with that story, passed
on to what he called the second act, the disclosure, with,
what he called, the characteristic All<e`>gre impudence---
which surpassed the impudence of kings, millionaires, or
tramps, by many degrees---the revelation of Rita's existence
to the world at large. It wasn't a very large
world, but then it was most choicely composed. How is
one to describe it shortly? In a sentence it was the
world that rides in the morning in the Bois.

  In something less than a year and a half from the time
he found her sitting on a broken fragment of stone work
buried in the grass of his wild garden, full of thrushes,
starlings, and other innocent creatures of the air, he had
given her amongst other accomplishments the art of sitting
admirably on a horse, and directly they returned to
Paris he took her out with him for their first morning ride.

  ``I leave you to judge of the sensation,'' continued Mr.
Blunt, with a faint grimace, as though the words had an
acrid taste in his mouth. ``And the consternation,'' he
added venomously. ``Many of those men on that great
morning had some one of their womenkind with them. 
But their hats had to go off all the same, especially the
hats of the fellows who were under some sort of obligation
to All<e`>gre. You would be astonished to hear the
names of people, of real personalities in the world, who,
not to mince matters, owed money to All<e`>gre. And I
don't mean in the world of art only. In the first rout of
the surprise some story of an adopted daughter was set
abroad hastily, I believe. You know `adopted' with a
peculiar accent on the word---and it was plausible
enough. I have been told that at that time she looked
extremely youthful by his side, I mean extremely youthful
in expression, in the eyes, in the smile. She must
have been . . .''

  Blunt pulled himself up short, but not so short as not
to let the confused murmur of the word ``adorable''
reach our attentive cars.

  The heavy Mills made a slight movement in his chair. 
The effect on me was more inward, a strange emotion
which left me perfectly still; and for the moment of
silence Blunt looked more fatal than ever.

  ``I understand it didn't last very long,'' he addressed
us politely again. ``And no wonder! The sort of talk she
would have heard during that first springtime in Paris
would have put an impress on a much less receptive personality;
for of course All<e`>gre didn't close his doors to
his friends and this new apparition was not of the sort
to make them keep away. After that first morning she
always had somebody to ride at her bridle hand. Old
Doyen, the sculptor, was the first to approach them. At
that age a man may venture on anything. He rides a
strange animal like a circus horse. Rita had spotted him
out of the corner of her eye as he passed them, putting
up his enormous paw in a still more enormous glove, airily,
you know, like this'' (Blunt waved his hand above his
head), ``to All<e`>gre. He passes on. All at once he wheels
his fantastic animal round and comes trotting after them. 
With the merest casual `_Bonjour,_ All<e`>gre' he ranges
close to her on the other side and addresses her, hat in
hand, in that booming voice of his like a deferential roar
of the sea very far away. His articulation is not good,
and the first words she really made out were `I am an
old sculptor. . . . Of course there is that habit.
. . . But I can see you through all that. . . .'

  ``He put his hat on very much on one side. `I am
a great sculptor of women,' he declared. `I gave up
my life to them, poor unfortunate creatures, the most
beautiful, the wealthiest, the most loved. . . . Two
generations of them. . . . Just look at me full in the
eyes, _mon enfant._'

  ``They stared at each other. Do<n~>a Rita confessed to
me that the old fellow made her heart beat with such
force that she couldn't manage to smile at him. And she
saw his eyes run full of tears. He wiped them simply
with the back of his hand and went on booming faintly. 
`Thought so. You are enough to make one cry. I
thought my artist's life was finished, and here you come
along from devil knows where with this young friend of
mine, who isn't a bad smearer of canvases---but it's
marble and bronze that you want. . . . I shall finish
my artist's life with your face; but I shall want a bit
of those shoulders, too. . . . You hear, All<e`>egre, I
must have a bit of her shoulders, too. I can see through
the cloth that they are divine. If they aren't divine I
will eat my hat. Yes, I will do your head and then---
_nunc dimittis._'

  ``These were the first words with which the world greeted
her, or should I say civilization did; already both her
native mountains and the cavern of oranges belonged
to a prehistoric age. `Why don't you ask him to come
this afternoon?' All<e`>gre's voice suggested gently. `He
knows the way to the house.'

  ``The old man said with extraordinary fervour, `Oh,
yes I will,' pulled up his horse and they went on. She
told me that she could feel her heart-beats for a long
time. The remote power of that voice, those old eyes
full of tears, that noble and ruined face, had affected her
extraordinarily she said. But perhaps what affected her
was the shadow, the still living shadow of a great passion
in the man's heart.

  ``All<e`>gre remarked to her calmly: `He has been a
little mad all his life.' ''



		III

  Mills lowered the hands holding the extinct and even
cold pipe before his big face.

  ``H'm, shoot an arrow into that old man's heart like
this? But was there anything done?''

  ``A terra-cotta bust, I believe. Good? I don't know. 
I rather think it's in this house. A lot of things have
been sent down from Paris here, when she gave up the
Pavilion. When she goes up now she stays in hotels,
you know. I imagine it is locked up in one of these
things,'' went on Blunt, pointing towards the end of the
studio where amongst the monumental presses of dark
oak lurked the shy dummy which had worn the stiff robes
of the Byzantine Empress and the amazing hat of the
``Girl,'' rakishly. I wondered whether that dummy had
travelled from Paris, too, and whether with or without
its head. Perhaps that head had been left behind, having
rolled into a corner of some empty room in the dismantled
Pavilion. I represented it to myself very lonely, without
features, like a turnip, with a mere peg sticking out where
the neck should have been. . . . And Mr. Blunt was
talking on.

  ``There are treasures behind these locked doors, brocades,
old jewels, unframed pictures, bronzes, chinoiseries,
Japoneries.''

  He growled as much as a man of his accomplished
manner and voice could growl. ``I don't suppose she
gave away all that to her sister, but I shouldn't be surprised
if that timid rustic didn't lay a claim to the lot
for the love of God and the good of the Church. . . .
And held on with her teeth, too,'' he added graphically.

  Mills' face remained grave. Very grave. I was amused
at those little venomous outbreaks of the fatal Mr. Blunt. 
Again I knew myself utterly forgotten. But I didn't feel
dull and I didn't even feel sleepy. That last strikes me
as strange at this distance of time, in regard of my tender
years and of the depressing hour which precedes the
dawn. We had been drinking that straw-coloured wine,
too, I won't say like water (nobody would have drunk
water like that) but, well . . . and the haze of tobacco
smoke was like the blue mist of great distances
seen in dreams.

  Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them
in the sight of all Paris. It was that old glory that opened
the series of companions of those morning rides; a series
which extended through three successive Parisian springtimes
and comprised a famous physiologist, a fellow who
seemed to hint that mankind could be made immortal or
at least everlastingly old; a fashionable philosopher and
psychologist who used to lecture to enormous audiences of
women with his tongue in his cheek (but never permitted
himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that
surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity),
and everybody else at all distinguished including also a
celebrated person who turned out later to be a swindler. 
But he was really a genius. . . . All this according
to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those details with a sort of
languid zest covering a secret irritation.

  ``Apart from that, you know,'' went on Mr. Blunt,
``all she knew of the world of men and women (I mean
till All<e`>gre's death) was what she had seen of it from the
saddle two hours every morning during four months of
the year or so. Absolutely all, with All<e`>gre self-denyingly
on her right hand, with that impenetrable air of
guardianship. Don't touch! He didn't like his treasures
to be touched unless he actually put some unique object
into your hands with a sort of triumphant murmur, `Look
close at that.' Of course I only have heard all this. I am
much too small a person, you understand, to even . . .''

  He flashed his white teeth at us most agreeably, but
the upper part of his face, the shadowed setting of his
eyes, and the slight drawing in of his eyebrows gave a
fatal suggestion. I thought suddenly of the definition he
applied to himself: ``_Americain, catholique et gentilhomme''
completed by that startling ``I live by my
sword'' uttered in a light drawing-room tone tinged by a
flavour of mockery lighter even than air.

  He insisted to us that the first and only time he had
seen All<e`>gre a little close was that morning in the Bois
with his mother. His Majesty (whom God preserve),
then not even an active Pretender, flanked the girl, still
a girl, on the other side, the usual companion for a month
past or so. All<e`>gre had suddenly taken it into his head
to paint his portrait. A sort of intimacy had sprung up. 
Mrs. Blunt's remark was that of the two striking horse-men
All<e`>gre looked the more kingly.

  ``The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler,''
commented Mr. Blunt through his clenched teeth. ``A
man absolutely without parentage. Without a single relation
in the world. Just a freak.''

  ``That explains why he could leave all his fortune to
her,'' said Mills.

  ``The will, I believe,'' said Mr. Blunt moodily, ``was
written on a half sheet of paper, with his device of an
Assyrian bull at the head. What the devil did he mean
by it? Anyway it was the last time that she surveyed
the world of men and women from the saddle. Less than
three months later . . .''

  ``All<e`>gre died and . . .'' murmured Mills in an interested
manner.

  ``And she had to dismount,'' broke in Mr. Blunt grimly.
``Dismount right into the middle of it. Down to the
very ground, you understand. I suppose you can guess
what that would mean. She didn't know what to do with
herself. She had never been on the ground. She . . .''

  ``Aha!'' said Mills.

  ``Even eh! eh! if you like,'' retorted Mr. Blunt, in an
unrefined tone, that made me open my eyes, which were
well opened before, still wider.

  He turned to me with that horrible trick of his of commenting
upon Mills as though that quiet man whom I
admired, whom I trusted, and for whom I had already
something resembling affection had been as much of
a dummy as that other one lurking in the shadows, pitiful
and headless in its attitude of alarmed chastity.

  ``Nothing escapes his penetration. He can perceive a
haystack at an enormous distance when he is interested.''

  I thought this was going rather too far, even to the
borders of vulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and
only reached for his tobacco pouch.

  ``But that's nothing to my mother's interest. She can
never see a haystack, therefore she is always so surprised
and excited. Of course Do<n~>a Rita was not a woman
about whom the newspapers insert little paragraphs. 
But All<e`>gre was the sort of man. A lot came out in print
about him and a lot was talked in the world about her;
and at once my dear mother perceived a haystack and
naturally became unreasonably absorbed in it. I thought
her interest would wear out. But it didn't. She had
received a shock and had received an impression by
means of that girl. My mother has never been treated
with impertinence before, and the <ae>sthetic impression
must have been of extraordinary strength. I must suppose
that it amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I
can't account for her proceedings in any other way. 
When Rita turned up in Paris a year and a half after
All<e`>gre's death some shabby journalist (smart creature)
hit upon the notion of alluding to her as the heiress of
Mr. All<e`>gre. `The heiress of Mr. All<e`>gre has taken up
her residence again amongst the treasures of art in that
Pavilion so well known to the <e'>lite of the artistic, scientific,
and political world, not to speak of the members
of aristocratic and even royal families. . . .' You know
the sort of thing. It appeared first in the _Figaro,_ I
believe. And then at the end a little phrase: `She is
alone.' She was in a fair way of becoming a celebrity of
a sort. Daily little allusions and that sort of thing. 
Heaven only knows who stopped it. There was a rush of
`old friends' into that garden, enough to scare all the
little birds away. I suppose one or several of them, having
influence with the press, did it. But the gossip didn't
stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed a very
certain and very significant sort of fact, and of course the
Venetian episode was talked about in the houses frequented
by my mother. It was talked about from a royalist
point of view with a kind of respect. It was even
said that the inspiration and the resolution of the war
going on now over the Pyrenees had come out from that
head. . . . Some of them talked as if she were the
guardian angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist
gush is like.''

  Mr. Blunt's face expressed sarcastic disgust. Mills
moved his head the least little bit. Apparently he knew.

  ``Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to
have affected my mother's brain. I was already with the
royal army and of course there could be no question of
regular postal communications with France. My mother
hears or overhears somewhere that the heiress of Mr.
All<e`>gre is contemplating a secret journey. All the noble
Salons were full of chatter about that secret naturally. 
So she sits down and pens an autograph: `Madame,
Informed that you are proceeding to the place on which
the hopes of all the right thinking people are fixed, I
trust to your womanly sympathy with a mother's
anxious feelings, etc., etc.,' and ending with a request
to take messages to me and bring news of me. . . .
The coolness of my mother!''

  Most unexpectedly Mills was heard murmuring a question
which seemed to me very odd.

  ``I wonder how your mother addressed that note?''

  A moment of silence ensued.

  ``Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think,'' retorted
Mr. Blunt, with one of his grins that made me
doubt the stability of his feelings and the consistency of
his outlook in regard to his whole tale. ``My mother's
maid took it in a fiacre very late one evening to the
Pavilion and brought an answer scrawled on a scrap of
paper: `Write your messages at once' and signed with
a big capital R. So my mother sat down again to her
charming writing desk and the maid made another journey
in a fiacre just before midnight; and ten days later
or so I got a letter thrust into my hand at the _avanzadas_
just as I was about to start on a night patrol, together
with a note asking me to call on the writer so that she
might allay my mother's anxieties by telling her how I
looked.

  ``It was signed R only, but I guessed at once and
nearly fell off my horse with surprise.''

  ``You mean to say that Do<n~>a Rita was actually at the
Royal Headquarters lately?'' exclaimed Mills, with evident
surprise. ``Why, we---everybody---thought that all
this affair was over and done with.''

  ``Absolutely. Nothing in the world could be more
done with than that episode. Of course the rooms in the
hotel at Tolosa were retained for her by an order from Royal
Headquarters. Two garret-rooms, the place was so full of
all sorts of court people; but I can assure you that for
the three days she was there she never put her head outside
the door. General Mongroviejo called on her officially
from the King. A general, not anybody of the
household, you see. That's a distinct shade of the present
relation. He stayed just five minutes. Some personage
from the Foreign department at Headquarters was
closeted for about a couple of hours. That was of course
business. Then two officers from the staff came together
with some explanations or instructions to her. Then
Baron H., a fellow with a pretty wife, who had made
so many sacrifices for the cause, raised a great to-do
about seeing her and she consented to receive him for
a moment. They say he was very much frightened by
her arrival, but after the interview went away all smiles. 
Who else? Yes, the Archbishop came. Half an hour. 
This is more than is necessary to give a blessing. and I
can't conceive what else he had to give her. But I am
sure he got something out of her. Two peasants from the
upper valley were sent for by military authorities and
she saw them, too. That friar who hangs about the
court has been in and out several times. Well, and lastly,
I myself. I got leave from the outposts. That was
the first time I talked to her. I would have gone that
evening back to the regiment, but the, friar met me in
the corridor and informed me that I would be ordered to
escort that most loyal and noble lady back to the French
frontier as a personal mission of the highest honour. I
was inclined to laugh at him. He himself is a cheery and
jovial person and he laughed with me quite readily---
but I got the order before dark all right. It was rather a
job, as the Alphonsists were attacking the right flank of
our whole front and there was some considerable disorder
there. I mounted her on a mule and her maid on
another. We spent one night in a ruined old tower occupied
by some of our infantry and got away at daybreak
under the Alphonsist shells. The maid nearly died of
fright and one of the troopers with us was wounded. To
smuggle her back across the frontier was another job
but it wasn't my job. It wouldn't have done for her to
appear in sight of French frontier posts in the company
of Carlist uniforms. She seems to have a fearless streak
in her nature. At one time as we were climbing a slope
absolutely exposed to artillery fire I asked her on purpose,
being provoked by the way she looked about at the
scenery, `A little emotion, eh?' And she answered me in
a low voice: `Oh, yes! I am moved. I used to run about
these hills when I was little.' And note, just then the
trooper close behind us had been wounded by a shell fragment.
He was swearing awfully and fighting with his horse. 
The shells were falling around us about two to the minute.

  ``Luckily the Alphonsist shells are not much better
than our own. But women are funny. I was afraid the
maid would jump down and clear out amongst the rocks,
in which case we should have had to dismount and catch
her. But she didn't do that; she sat perfectly still on her
mule and shrieked. Just simply shrieked. Ultimately
we came to a curiously shaped rock at the end of a short
wooded valley. It was very still there and the sunshine
was brilliant. I said to Do<n~>a Rita: `We will have to
part in a few minutes. I understand that my mission
ends at this rock.' And she said: `I know this rock well. 
This is my country.'

  Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently
three peasants appeared, waiting for us, two youths
and one shaven old man, with a thin nose like a sword
blade and perfectly round eyes, a character well known
to the whole Carlist army. The two youths stopped
under the trees at a distance, but the old fellow came
quite close up and gazed at her, screwing up his eyes as if
looking at the sun. Then he raised his arm very slowly
and took his red _boina_ off his bald head. I watched her
smiling at him all the time. I daresay she knew him as
well as she knew the old rock. Very old rock. The rock
of ages---and the aged man---landmarks of her youth. 
Then the mules started walking smartly forward, with
the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished
between the trees. These fellows were most likely
sent out by her uncle the Cura.

  ``It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of
open country framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak
or two in the distance, the thin smoke of some invisible
_caserios_, rising straight up here and there. Far away
behind us the guns had ceased and the echoes in the
gorges had died out. I never knew what peace meant
before. . . .''

  ``Nor since,'' muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and
then went on. ``The little stone church of her uncle, the
holy man of the family, might have been round the corner
of the next spur of the nearest hill. I dismounted to
bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was only a
nasty long scratch. While I was busy about it a bell
began to ring in the distance. The sound fell deliciously
on the ear, clear like the morning light. But it
stopped all at once. You know how a distant bell
stops suddenly. I never knew before what stillness
meant. While I was wondering at it the fellow holding
our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a
Spaniard, not a Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian
that song you know,

	`` `Oh bells of my native village,
	    I am going away . . . good-bye!'

He had a good voice. When the last note had floated
away I remounted, but there was a charm in the spot,
something particular and individual because while we
were looking at it before turning our horses' heads away
the singer said: `I wonder what is the name of this
place,' and the other man remarked: `Why, there is no
village here,' and the first one insisted: `No, I mean this
spot, this very place.' The wounded trooper decided that it
had no name probably. But he was wrong. It had a name. 
The hill, or the rock, or the wood, or the whole had a
name. I heard of it by chance later. It was---Lastaola.''

  A cloud of tobacco smoke from Mills' pipe drove between
my head and the head of Mr. Blunt, who, strange
to say, yawned slightly. It seemed to me an obvious
affectation on the part of that man of perfect manners,
and, moreover, suffering from distressing insomnia.

  ``This is how we first met and how we first parted,''
he said in a weary, indifferent tone. ``It's quite possible
that she did see her uncle on the way. It's perhaps on
this occasion that she got her sister to come out of the
wilderness. I have no doubt she had a pass from the
French Government giving her the completest freedom
of action. She must have got it in Paris before leaving.''

  Mr. Blunt broke out into worldly, slightly cynical smiles.

  ``She can get anything she likes in Paris. She could
get a whole army over the frontier if she liked. She
could get herself admitted into the Foreign Office at one
o'clock in the morning if it so pleased her. Doors fly
open before the heiress of Mr. All<e`>gre. She has inherited
the old friends, the old connections. . . . Of course,
if she were a toothless old woman . . . But, you see,
she isn't. The ushers in all the ministries bow down to
the ground therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctums
take on an eager tone when they say, `_Faites entrer._'
My mother knows something about it. She has followed
her career with the greatest attention. And Rita herself
is not even surprised. She accomplishes most extraordinary
things, as naturally as buying a pair of gloves. 
People in the shops are very polite and people in the world
are like people in the shops. What did she know of the
world? She had seen it only from the saddle. Oh, she
will get your cargo released for you all right. How will
she do it? . . . Well, when it's done---you follow me,
Mills?---when it's done she will hardly know herself.''

  ``It's hardly possible that she shouldn't be aware,''
Mills pronounced calmly.

  ``No, she isn't an idiot,'' admitted Mr. Blunt, in the
same matter-of-fact voice. ``But she confessed to myself
only the other day that she suffered from a sense of
unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own
feelings surely. And she said to me: Yes, there was one
of them at least about which she had no doubt; and you
will never guess what it was. Don't try. I happen to
know, because we are pretty good friends.''

  At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. 
Mills' staring eyes moved for a glance towards Blunt, I,
who was occupying the divan, raised myself on the cushions
a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put his elbow
on the table.

  ``I asked her what it was. I don't see,'' went on Mr.
Blunt, with a perfectly horrible gentleness, ``why I should
have shown particular consideration to the heiress of
Mr. All<e`>gre. I don't mean to that particular mood of
hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she told
me. It's fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . .''

  He added after a pause, ``There can be not the slightest
doubt of her courage. But she distinctly uttered the
word fear.''

  There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching
his legs.

  ``A person of imagination,'' he began, ``a young, virgin
intelligence, steeped for nearly five years in the talk
of All<e`>gre's studio, where every hard truth had been
cracked and every belief had been worried into shreds. 
They were like a lot of intellectual dogs, you know . . .''

  ``Yes, yes, of course,'' Blunt interrupted hastily, ``the
intellectual personality altogether adrift, a soul without
a home . . . but I, who am neither very fine nor very
deep, I am convinced that the fear is material.''

  ``Because she confessed to it being that?'' insinuated
Mills.

  ``No, because she didn't,'' contradicted Blunt, with an
angry frown and in an extremely suave voice. ``In fact,
she bit her tongue. And considering what good friends
we are (under fire together and all that) I conclude that
there is nothing there to boast of. Neither is my friendship,
as a matter of fact.''

  Mills' face was the very perfection of indifference. 
But I who was looking at him, in my innocence, to discover
what it all might mean, I had a notion that it was
perhaps a shade too perfect.

  ``My leave is a farce,'' Captain Blunt burst out, with a
most unexpected exasperation. ``As an officer of Don
Carlos, I have no more standing than a bandit. I ought
to have been interned in those filthy old barracks in
Avignon a long time ago. . . . Why am I not? Because
Do<n~>a Rita exists and for no other reason on earth. 
Of course it's known that I am about. She has only to
whisper over the wires to the Minister of the Interior,
`Put that bird in a cage for me,' and the thing would be
done without any more formalities than that. . . .
Sad world this,'' he commented in a changed tone. 
``Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed
to that sort of thing.''

  It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh.
It was a deep, pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and
altogether free from that quality of derision that spoils
so many laughs and gives away the secret hardness of
hearts. But neither was it a very joyous laugh.

  ``But the truth of the matter is that I am `_en mission,_' ''
continued Captain Blunt. ``I have been instructed
to settle some things, to set other things going,
and, by my instructions, Do<n~>a Rita is to be the intermediary
for all those objects. And why? Because every
bald head in this Republican Government gets pink at
the top whenever her dress rustles outside the door. 
They bow with immense deference when the door opens,
but the bow conceals a smirk because of those Venetian
days. That confounded Versoy shoved his nose into that
business; he says accidentally. He saw them together on
the Lido and (those writing fellows are horrible) he wrote
what he calls a vignette (I suppose accidentally, too)
under that very title. There was in it a Prince and a
lady and a big dog. He described how the Prince on
landing from the gondola emptied his purse into the
hands of a picturesque old beggar, while the lady, a little
way off, stood gazing back at Venice with the dog
romantically stretched at her feet. One of Versoy's beautiful
prose vignettes in a great daily that has a literary
column. But some other papers that didn't care a cent
for literature rehashed the mere fact. And that's the
sort of fact that impresses your political man, especially
if the lady is, well, such as she is . . .''

  He paused. His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from
us, in the direction of the shy dummy; and then he went
on with cultivated cynicism.

  ``So she rushes down here. Overdone, weary, rest for
her nerves. Nonsense. I assure you she has no more
nerves than I have.''

  I don't know how he meant it, but at that moment,
slim and elegant, he seemed a mere bundle of nerves
himself, with the flitting expressions on his thin, well-bred
face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands
amongst the objects on the table. With some pipe ash
amongst a little spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital
R. Then he looked into an empty glass profoundly. I
have a notion that I sat there staring and listening like a
yokel at a play. Mills' pipe was lying quite a foot away
in front of him, empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more
tobacco. Mr. Blunt assumed his dandified air---nervously.

  ``Of course her movements are commented on in the
most exclusive drawing-rooms and also in other places,
also exclusive, but where the gossip takes on another
tone. There they are probably saying that she has got
a `_coup de c<oe>ur_' for some one. Whereas I think she is
utterly incapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian
affair, the beginning of it and the end of it, was nothing
but a _coup de t<e^>te,_ and all those activities in which I am
involved, as you see (by order of Headquarters, ha, ha,
ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all this intimacy
into which I have dropped . . . Not to speak
of my mother, who is delightful, but as irresponsible as
one of those crazy princesses that shock their Royal
families. . . .''

  He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that
Mills' eyes seemed to have grown wider than I had ever
seen them before. In that tranquil face it was a great
play of feature. ``An intimacy,'' began Mr. Blunt, with
an extremely refined grimness of tone, ``an intimacy
with the heiress of Mr. All<e`>gre on the part of . . . on
my part, well, it isn't exactly . . . it's open . . . well,
I leave it to you, what does it look like?''

  ``Is there anybody looking on?'' Mills let fall, gently,
through his kindly lips.

  ``Not actually, perhaps, at this moment. But I don't
need to tell a man of the world, like you, that such
things cannot remain unseen. And that they are, well,
compromising, because of the mere fact of the fortune.''

  Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after
getting into it made himself heard while he looked for
his hat.

  ``Whereas the woman herself is, so to speak, priceless.''

  Mr. Blunt muttered the word ``Obviously.''

  By then we were all on our feet. The iron stove
glowed no longer and the lamp, surrounded by empty
bottles and empty glasses, had grown dimmer.

  I know that I had a great shiver on getting away from
the cushions of the divan.

  ``We will meet again in a few hours,'' said Mr. Blunt.
``Don't forget to come,'' he said, addressing me. ``Oh,
yes, do. Have no scruples. I am authorized to make
invitations.''

  He must have noticed my shyness, my surprise, my
embarrassment. And indeed I didn't know what to say.

  ``I assure you there isn't anything incorrect in your
coming,'' he insisted, with the greatest civility. ``You
will be introduced by two good friends, Mills and myself.
Surely you are not afraid of a very charming
woman. . . . ''

  I was not afraid, but my head swam a little and I only
looked at him mutely.

  ``Lunch precisely at midday. Mills will bring you along.
I am sorry you two are going. I shall throw myself on
the bed for an hour or two, but I am sure I won't sleep.''

  He accompanied us along the passage into the black-and-white
hall, where the low gas flame glimmered forlornly.
When he opened the front door the cold blast of
the mistral rushing down the street of the Consuls made
me shiver to the very marrow of my bones.

  Mills and I exchanged but a few words as we walked
down towards the centre of the town. In the chill tempestuous
dawn he strolled along musingly, disregarding
the discomfort of the cold, the depressing influence of
the hour, the desolation of the empty streets in which
the dry dust rose in whirls in front of us, behind us, flew
upon us from the side streets. The masks had gone
home and our footsteps echoed on the flagstones with
unequal sound as of men without purpose, without hope.

  ``I suppose you will come,'' said Mills suddenly.

  ``I really don't know,'' I said.

  ``Don't you? Well, remember I am not trying to persuade
you; but I am staying at the H<o^>tel de Louvre
and I shall leave there at a quarter to twelve for that
lunch. At a quarter to twelve, not a minute later. I
suppose you can sleep?''

  I laughed.

  ``Charming age, yours,'' said Mills, as we came out on
the quays. Already dim figures of the workers moved in
the biting dawn and the masted forms of ships were coming
out dimly, as far as the eye could reach down the old
harbour.

  ``Well,'' Mills began again, ``you may oversleep yourself.''

  This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as
we shook hands at the lower end of the Cannebi<e`>re. He
looked very burly as he walked away from me. I went
on towards my lodgings. My head was very full of confused
images, but I was really too tired to think.



		PART TWO

		    I

  Sometimes I wonder yet whether Mills wished me to
oversleep myself or not: that is, whether he really took
sufficient interest to care. His uniform kindliness of manner
made it impossible for me to tell. And I can hardly
remember my own feelings. Did I care? The whole
recollection of that time of my life has such a peculiar
quality that the beginning and the end of it are merged
in one sensation of profound emotion, continuous and
overpowering, containing the extremes of exultation, full
of careless joy and of an invincible sadness---like a day-dream.
The sense of all this having been gone through as
if in one great rush of imagination is all the stronger in the
distance of time, because it had something of that quality
even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that didn't cast
any shadow before.

  Not that those events were in the least extraordinary. 
They were, in truth, commonplace. What to my backward
glance seems startling and a little awful is their
punctualness and inevitability. Mills was punctual. Exactly
at a quarter to twelve he appeared under the lofty
portal of the H<o^>tel de Louvre, with his fresh face, his ill-fitting
grey suit, and enveloped in his own sympathetic
atmosphere.

  How could I have avoided him? To this day I have a
shadowy conviction of his inherent distinction of mind
and heart, far beyond any man I have ever met since.
He was unavoidable: and of course I never tried to avoid
him. The first sight on which his eyes fell was a victoria
pulled up before the hotel door, in which I sat with no
sentiment I can remember now but that of some slight
shyness. He got in without a moment's hesitation, his
friendly glance took me in from head to foot and (such
was his peculiar gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation.

  After we had gone a little way I couldn't help saying
to him with a bashful laugh: ``You know, it seems very
extraordinary that I should be driving out with you like
this.''

He turned to look at me and in his kind voice:

  ``You will find everything extremely simple,'' he said.
``So simple that you will be quite able to hold your own. 
I suppose you know that the world is selfish, I mean the
majority of the people in it, often unconsciously I must
admit, and especially people with a mission, with a fixed
idea, with some fantastic object in view, or even with
only some fantastic illusion. That doesn't mean that
they have no scruples. And I don't know that at this
moment I myself am not one of them.''

  ``That, of course, I can't say,'' I retorted.

  ``I haven't seen her for years,'' he said, ``and in comparison
with what she was then she must be very grown
up by now. From what we heard from Mr. Blunt she
had experiences which would have matured her more
than they would teach her. There are of course people
that are not teachable. I don't know that she is one of
them. But as to maturity that's quite another thing. 
Capacity for suffering is developed in every human being
worthy of the name.''

  ``Captain Blunt doesn't seem to be a very happy person,''
I said. ``He seems to have a grudge against everybody.
People make him wince. The things they do, the
things they say. He must be awfully mature.''

  Mills gave me a sidelong look. It met mine of the
same character and we both smiled without openly looking
at each other. At the end of the Rue de Rome the
violent chilly breath of the mistral enveloped the victoria
in a great widening of brilliant sunshine without
heat. We turned to the right, circling at a stately pace
about the rather mean obelisk which stands at the entrance
to the Prado.

  ``I don't know whether you are mature or not,'' said
Mills humorously. ``But I think you will do. 
You . . .''

  ``Tell me,'' I interrupted, ``what is really Captain
Blunt's position there?''

  And I nodded at the alley of the Prado opening before
us between the rows of the perfectly leafless trees.

  ``Thoroughly false, I should think. It doesn't accord
either with his illusions or his pretensions, or even with
the real position he has in the world. And so what between
his mother and the General Headquarters and the
state of his own feelings he . . .''

  ``He is in love with her,'' I interrupted again.

  ``That wouldn't make it any easier. I'm not at all
sure of that. But if so it can't be a very idealistic sentiment.
All the warmth of his idealism is concentrated
upon a certain `_Am<e'>ricain, Catholique et gentilhomme. . . .' ''

  The smile which for a moment dwelt on his lips was
not unkind.

  ``At the same time he has a very good grip of the
material conditions that surround, as it were, the situation.''

  ``What do you mean? That Do<n~>a Rita'' (the name
came strangely familiar to my tongue) ``is rich, that she
has a fortune of her own?''

  ``Yes, a fortune,'' said Mills. ``But it was All<e`>gre's
fortune before. . . . And then there is Blunt's fortune:
he lives by his sword. And there is the fortune of
his mother, I assure you a perfectly charming, clever, and
most aristocratic old lady, with the most distinguished
connections. I really mean it. She doesn't live by her
sword. She . . . she lives by her wits. I have a
notion that those two dislike each other heartily at
times. . . . Here we are.''

  The victoria stopped in the side alley, bordered by the
low walls of private grounds. We got out before a
wrought-iron gateway which stood half open and walked
up a circular drive to the door of a large villa of a neglected
appearance. The mistral howled in the sunshine,
shaking the bare bushes quite furiously. And everything
was bright and hard, the air was hard, the light
was hard, the ground under our feet was hard.

  The door at which Mills rang came open almost at
once. The maid who opened it was short, dark, and
slightly pockmarked. For the rest, an obvious ``_femme-de-chambre,_''
and very busy. She said quickly, ``Madame
has just returned from her ride,'' and went up the
stairs leaving us to shut the front door ourselves.

  The staircase had a crimson carpet. Mr. Blunt appeared
from somewhere in the hall. He was in riding
breeches and a black coat with ample square skirts. This
get-up suited him but it also changed him extremely by
doing away with the effect of flexible slimness he produced
in his evening clothes. He looked to me not at
all himself but rather like a brother of the man who had
been talking to us the night before. He carried about
him a delicate perfume of scented soap. He gave us a
flash of his white teeth and said:

  ``It's a perfect nuisance. We have just dismounted. 
I will have to lunch as I am. A lifelong habit of beginning
her day on horseback. She pretends she is unwell
unless she does. I daresay, when one thinks there has
been hardly a day for five or six years that she didn't begin
with a ride. That's the reason she is always rushing
away from Paris where she can't go out in the morning
alone. Here, of course, it's different. And as I, too, am
a stranger here I can go out with her. Not that I particularly
care to do it.''

  These last words were addressed to Mills specially,
with the addition of a mumbled remark: ``It's a confounded
position.'' Then calmly to me with a swift
smile: ``We have been talking of you this morning. 
You are expected with impatience.''

  ``Thank you very much,'' I said, ``but I can't help
asking myself what I am doing here.''

  The upward cast in the eyes of Mills who was facing
the staircase made us both, Blunt and I, turn round. 
The woman of whom I had heard so much, in a sort of
way in which I had never heard a woman spoken of before,
was coming down the stairs, and my first sensation
was that of profound astonishment at this evidence that
she did really exist. And even then the visual impression
was more of colour in a picture than of the forms
of actual life. She was wearing a wrapper, a sort of
dressing-gown of pale blue silk embroidered with black
and gold designs round the neck and down the front,
lapped round her and held together by a broad belt of
the same material. Her slippers were of the same colour,
with black bows at the instep. The white stairs, the
deep crimson of the carpet, and the light blue of the
dress made an effective combination of colour to set off
the delicate carnation of that face, which, after the first
glance given to the whole person, drew irresistibly your
gaze to itself by an indefinable quality of charm beyond
all analysis and made you think of remote races, of
strange generations, of the faces of women sculptured on
immemorial monuments and of those lying unsung in
their tombs. While she moved downwards from step to
step with slightly lowered eyes there flashed upon me
suddenly the recollection of words heard at night, of
All<e`>gre's words about her, of there being in her ``something
of the women of all time.''

  At the last step she raised her eyelids, treated us to an
exhibition of teeth as dazzling as Mr. Blunt's and looking
even stronger; and indeed, as she approached us she
brought home to our hearts (but after all I am speaking
only for myself) a vivid sense of her physical perfection
in beauty of limb and balance of nerves, and not so much
of grace, probably, as of absolute harmony.

  She said to us, ``I am sorry I kept you waiting.'' Her
voice was low pitched, penetrating, and of the most
seductive gentleness. She offered her hand to Mills very
frankly as to an old friend. Within the extraordinarily
wide sleeve, lined with black silk, I could see the arm,
very white, with a pearly gleam in the shadow. But to
me she extended her hand with a slight stiffening, as it
were a recoil of her person, combined with an extremely
straight glance. It was a finely shaped, capable hand. I
bowed over it, and we just touched fingers. I did not
look then at her face.

  Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying
on the round marble-topped table in the middle of the
hall. She seized one of them with a wonderfully quick,
almost feline, movement and tore it open, saying to us,
``Excuse me, I must . . . Do go into the dining-room.
Captain Blunt, show the way.''

  Her widened eyes stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt
threw one of the doors open, but before we passed
through it we heard a petulant exclamation accompanied
by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a
laugh which had in it a note of contempt.

  The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by
Mr. Blunt. He had remained on the other side, possibly
to soothe. The room in which we found ourselves was
long like a gallery and ended in a rotunda with many
windows. It was long enough for two fireplaces of red
polished granite. A table laid out for four occupied very
little space. The floor inlaid in two kinds of wood in a
bizarre pattern was highly waxed, reflecting objects like
still water.

  Before very long Do<n~>a Rita and Blunt rejoined us and
we sat down around the table; but before we could begin
to talk a dramatically sudden ring at the front door
stilled our incipient animation. Do<n~>a Rita looked at us
all in turn, with surprise and, as it were, with suspicion. 
``How did he know I was here?'' she whispered after
looking at the card which was brought to her. She
passed it to Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who made a
faint grimace, dropped it on the table-cloth, and only
whispered to me, ``A journalist from Paris.''

  ``He has run me to earth,'' said Do<n~>a Rita. ``One
would bargain for peace against hard cash if these fellows
weren't always ready to snatch at one's very soul with
the other hand. It frightens me.''

  Her voice floated mysterious and penetrating from
her lips, which moved very little. Mills was watching
her with sympathetic curiosity. Mr. Blunt muttered:
``Better not make the brute angry.'' For a moment
Do<n~>a Rita's face, with its narrow eyes, its wide brow, and
high cheek bones, became very still; then her colour was
a little heightened. ``Oh,'' she said softly, ``let him come
in. He would be really dangerous if he had a mind---
you know,'' she said to Mills.

  The person who had provoked all those remarks and
as much hesitation as though he had been some sort of
wild beast astonished me on being admitted, first by the
beauty of his white head of hair and then by his paternal
aspect and the innocent simplicity of his manner. They
laid a cover for him between Mills and Do<n~>a Rita, who
quite openly removed the envelopes she had brought
with her, to the other side of her plate. As openly the
man's round china-blue eyes followed them in an attempt
to make out the handwriting of the addresses.

  He seemed to know, at least slightly, both Mills and
Blunt. To me he gave a stare of stupid surprise. He
addressed our hostess.

  ``Resting? Rest is a very good thing. Upon my
word, I thought I would find you alone. But you have
too much sense. Neither man nor woman has been
created to live alone. . . . After this opening he had
all the talk to himself. It was left to him pointedly, and
I verily believe that I was the only one who showed an
appearance of interest. I couldn't help it. The others,
including Mills, sat like a lot of deaf and dumb people. 
No. It was even something more detached. They sat
rather like a very superior lot of waxworks, with the fixed
but indetermined facial expression and with that odd air
wax figures have of being aware of their existence being
but a sham.

  I was the exception; and nothing could have marked
better my status of a stranger, the completest possible
stranger in the moral region in which those people lived,
moved, enjoying or suffering their incomprehensible emotions.
I was as much of a stranger as the most hopeless
castaway stumbling in the dark upon a hut of natives
and finding them in the grip of some situation appertaining
to the mentalities, prejudices, and problems of an undiscovered
country---of a country of which he had not
even had one single clear glimpse before.

  It was even worse in a way. It ought to have been
more disconcerting. For, pursuing the image of the castaway
blundering upon the complications of an unknown
scheme of life, it was I, the castaway, who was the
savage, the simple innocent child of nature. Those people
were obviously more civilized than I was. They had
more rites, more ceremonies, more complexity in their
sensations, more knowledge of evil, more varied meanings
to the subtle phrases of their language. Naturally!
I was still so young! And yet I assure you, that just
then I lost all sense of inferiority. And why? Of course
the carelessness and the ignorance of youth had something
to do with that. But there was something else besides. 
Looking at Do<n~>a Rita, her head leaning on her hand,
with her dark lashes lowered on the slightly flushed
cheek, I felt no longer alone in my youth. That woman
of whom I had heard these things I have set down with
all the exactness of unfailing memory, that woman was
revealed to me young, younger than anybody I had ever
seen, as young as myself (and my sensation of my youth
was then very acute); revealed with something peculiarly
intimate in the conviction, as if she were young exactly
in the same way in which I felt myself young; and that
therefore no misunderstanding between us was possible
and there could be nothing more for us to know about
each other. Of course this sensation was momentary,
but it was illuminating; it was a light which could not
last, but it left no darkness behind. On the contrary, it
seemed to have kindled magically somewhere within me
a glow of assurance, of unaccountable confidence in myself:
a warm, steady, and eager sensation of my individual
life beginning for good there, on that spot, in that
sense of solidarity, in that seduction.



			II

  For this, properly speaking wonderful, reason I was the
only one of the company who could listen without constraint
to the unbidden guest with that fine head of white
hair, so beautifully kept, so magnificently waved, so artistically
arranged that respect could not be felt for it any
more than for a very expensive wig in the window of a
hair-dresser. In fact, I had an inclination to smile at it. 
This proves how unconstrained I felt. My mind was
perfectly at liberty; and so of all the eyes in that room mine
was the only pair able to look about in easy freedom. 
All the other listeners' eyes were cast down, including
Mills' eyes, but that I am sure was only because of his
perfect and delicate sympathy. He could not have been
concerned otherwise.

  The intruder devoured the cutlets---if they were cutlets. 
Notwithstanding my perfect liberty of mind I was not
aware of what we were eating. I have a notion that
the lunch was a mere show, except of course for the man
with the white hair, who was really hungry and who,
besides, must have had the pleasant sense of dominating
the situation. He stooped over his plate and worked his
jaw deliberately while his blue eyes rolled incessantly;
but as a matter of fact he never looked openly at any one
of us. Whenever he laid down his knife and fork he
would throw himself back and start retailing in a light
tone some Parisian gossip about prominent people.

  He talked first about a certain politician of mark. His
``dear Rita'' knew him. His costume dated back to '48,
he was made of wood and parchment and still swathed
his neck in a white cloth; and even his wife had never
been seen in a low-necked dress. Not once in her life. 
She was buttoned up to the chin like her husband. Well,
that man had confessed to him that when he was engaged
in political controversy, not on a matter of principle but
on some special measure in debate, he felt ready to kill
everybody.

  He interrupted himself for a comment. ``I am something
like that myself. I believe it's a purely professional
feeling. Carry one's point whatever it is. Normally
I couldn't kill a fly. My sensibility is too acute
for that. My heart is too tender also. Much too tender. 
I am a Republican. I am a Red. As to all our present
masters and governors, all those people you are trying to
turn round your little finger, they are all horrible Royalists
in disguise. They are plotting the ruin of all the institutions
to which I am devoted. But I have never tried to
spoil your little game, Rita. After all, it's but a little
game. You know very well that two or three fearless
articles, something in my style, you know, would soon
put a stop to all that underhand backing of your king. 
I am calling him king because I want to be polite to you. 
He is an adventurer, a blood-thirsty, murderous adventurer,
for me, and nothing else. Look here, my dear
child, what are you knocking yourself about for? For
the sake of that bandit? _Allons donc!_ A pupil of Henry
All<e`>gre can have no illusions of that sort about any man. 
And such a pupil, too! Ah, the good old days in the
Pavilion! Don't think I claim any particular intimacy. 
It was just enough to enable me to offer my services to you,
Rita, when our poor friend died. I found myself handy
and so I came. It so happened that I was the first. You
remember, Rita? What made it possible for everybody
to get on with our poor dear All<e`>gre was his complete,
equable, and impartial contempt for all mankind. There
is nothing in that against the purest democratic principles;
but that you, Rita, should elect to throw so much
of your life away for the sake of a Royal adventurer, it
really knocks me over. For you don't love him. You
never loved him, you know.''

  He made a snatch at her hand, absolutely pulled it
away from under her head (it was quite startling) and
retaining it in his grasp, proceeded to a paternal patting
of the most impudent kind. She let him go on with
apparent insensibility. Meanwhile his eyes strayed round
the table over our faces. It was very trying. The
stupidity of that wandering stare had a paralysing power. 
He talked at large with husky familiarity.

  ``Here I come, expecting to find a good sensible girl
who had seen at last the vanity of all those things; half-light
in the rooms; surrounded by the works of her favourite
poets, and all that sort of thing. I say to myself: I
must just run in and see the dear wise child, and encourage
her in her good resolutions. . . . And I fall into the middle
of an _intime_ lunch-party. For I suppose it is _intime._
. . . Eh? Very? H'm, yes . . .''

  He was really appalling. Again his wandering stare
went round the table, with an expression incredibly incongruous
with the words. It was as though he had
borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of
that visit. He still held Do<n~>a Rita's hand, and, now and
then, patted it.

  ``It's discouraging,'' he cooed. ``And I believe not one
of you here is a Frenchman. I don't know what you are
all about. It's beyond me. But if we were a Republic
---you know I am an old Jacobin, sans-culotte and terrorist---
if this were a real Republic with the Convention
sitting and a Committee of Public Safety attending to
national business, you would all get your heads cut off. 
Ha, ha . . . I am joking, ha, ha! . . . and serve you
right, too. Don't mind my little joke.''

  While he was still laughing he released her hand and
she leaned her head on it again without haste. She had
never looked at him once.

  During the rather humiliating silence that ensued he
got a leather cigar case like a small valise out of his pocket,
opened it and looked with critical interest at the six
cigars it contained. The tireless _femme-de-chambre_ set
down a tray with coffee cups on the table. We each
(glad, I suppose, of something to do) took one, but he,
to begin with, sniffed at his. Do<n~>a Rita continued leaning
on her elbow, her lips closed in a reposeful expression
of peculiar sweetness. There was nothing drooping in
her attitude. Her face with the delicate carnation of a
rose and downcast eyes was as if veiled in firm immobility
and was so appealing that I had an insane impulse to
walk round and kiss the forearm on which it was leaning;
that strong, well-shaped forearm, gleaming not like marble
but with a living and warm splendour. So familiar
had I become already with her in my thoughts! Of course
I didn't do anything of the sort. It was nothing uncontrollable,
it was but a tender longing of a most respectful
and purely sentimental kind. I performed the act in
my thought quietly, almost solemnly, while the creature
with the silver hair leaned back in his chair, puffing at his
cigar, and began to speak again.

  It was all apparently very innocent talk. He informed
his ``dear Rita'' that he was really on his way to Monte
Carlo. A lifelong habit of his at this time of the year
but he was ready to run back to Paris if he could do
anything for his ``_ch<e`>re enfant,_'' run back for a day, for
two days, for three days, for any time; miss Monte Carlo
this year altogether, if he could be of the slightest use
and save her going herself. For instance he could see to
it that proper watch was kept over the Pavilion stuffed
with all these art treasures. What was going to happen
to all those things? . . . Making herself heard for the
first time Do<n~>a Rita murmured without moving that
she had made arrangements with the police to have it
properly watched. And I was enchanted by the almost
imperceptible play of her lips.

  But the anxious creature was not reassured. He pointed
out that things had been stolen out of the Louvre, which
was, he dared say, even better watched. And there was
that marvellous cabinet on the landing, black lacquer with
silver herons, which alone would repay a couple of burglars. 
A wheelbarrow, some old sacking, and they could trundle
it off under people's noses.

  ``Have you thought it all out?'' she asked in a cold
whisper, while we three sat smoking to give ourselves a
countenance (it was certainly no enjoyment) and wondering
what we would hear next.

  No, he had not. But he confessed that for years and
years he had been in love with that cabinet. And anyhow
what _was_ going to happen to the things? The world
was greatly exercised by that problem. He turned slightly
his beautifully groomed white head so as to address Mr.
Blunt directly.

  ``I had the pleasure of meeting your mother lately.''

  Mr. Blunt took his time to raise his eyebrows and flash
his teeth at him before he dropped negligently, ``I can't
imagine where you could have met my mother.''

  ``Why, at Bing's, the curio-dealer,'' said the other with
an air of the heaviest possible stupidity. And yet there
was something in these few words which seemed to imply
that if Mr. Blunt was looking for trouble he would certainly
get it. ``Bing was bowing her out of his shop, but
he was so angry about something that he was quite rude
even to me afterwards. I don't think it's very good for
_Madame votre m<e`>re_ to quarrel with Bing. He is a Parisian
personality. He's quite a power in his sphere. All
these fellows' nerves are upset from worry as to what will
happen to the All<e`>gre collection. And no wonder they
are nervous. A big art event hangs on your lips, my
dear, great Rita. And by the way, you too ought to
remember that it isn't wise to quarrel with people. What
have you done to that poor Azzolati? Did you really tell
him to get out and never come near you again, or something
awful like that? I don't doubt that he was of use
to you or to your king. A man who gets invitations to
shoot with the President at Rambouillet! I saw him
only the other evening; I heard he had been winning
immensely at cards; but he looked perfectly wretched, the
poor fellow. He complained of your conduct---oh, very
much! He told me you had been perfectly brutal with
him. He said to me: `I am no good for anything, _mon
cher._ The other day at Rambouillet, whenever I had a
hare at the end of my gun I would think of her cruel
words and my eyes would run full of tears. I missed
every shot' . . . You are not fit for diplomatic work,
you know, _ma ch<e`>re._ You are a mere child at it. When
you want a middle-aged gentleman to do anything for
you, you don't begin by reducing him to tears. I should
have thought any woman would have known that much.
A nun would have known that much. What do you say?
Shall I run back to Paris and make it up for you with
Azzolati?''

  He waited for her answer. The compression of his thin
lips was full of significance. I was surprised to see our
hostess shake her head negatively the least bit, for indeed
by her pose, by the thoughtful immobility of her face
she seemed to be a thousand miles away from us all, lost
in an infinite reverie.

  He gave it up. ``Well, I must be off. The express for
Nice passes at four o'clock. I will be away about three
weeks and then you shall see me again. Unless I strike
a run of bad luck and get cleaned out, in which case you
shall see me before then.''

  He turned to Mills suddenly.

  ``Will your cousin come south this year, to that beautiful
villa of his at Cannes?''

  Mills hardly deigned to answer that he didn't know
anything about his cousin's movements.

  ``A _grand seigneur_ combined with a great connoisseur,''
opined the other heavily. His mouth had gone slack and
he looked a perfect and grotesque imbecile under his wiglike
crop of white hair. Positively I thought he would
begin to slobber. But he attacked Blunt next.

  ``Are you on your way down, too? A little flutter. . . .
It seems to me you haven't been seen in your usual Paris
haunts of late. Where have you been all this time?''

  ``Don't you know where I have been?'' said Mr. Blunt
with great precision.

  ``No, I only ferret out things that may be of some use
to me,'' was the unexpected reply, uttered with an air of
perfect vacancy and swallowed by Mr. Blunt in blank
silence.

  At last he made ready to rise from the table. ``Think
over what I have said, my dear Rita.''

  ``It's all over and done with,'' was Do<n~>a Rita's answer,
in a louder tone than I had ever heard her use before. 
It thrilled me while she continued: ``I mean, this thinking.''
She was back from the remoteness of her meditation,
very much so indeed. She rose and moved away from
the table, inviting by a sign the other to follow her; which
he did at once, yet slowly and as it were warily.

  It was a conference in the recess of a window. We
three remained seated round the table from which the
dark maid was removing the cups and the plates with
brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Do<n~>a Rita's
profile, irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable
way, at her well-shaped head with the hair twisted
high up and apparently held in its place by a gold arrow
with a jewelled shaft. We couldn't hear what she said,
but the movement of her lips and the play of her features
were full of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity
and gentleness. She spoke with fire without raising her
voice. The man listened round-shouldered, but seeming
much too stupid to understand. I could see now and then
that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one
moment Do<n~>a Rita turned her head to the room and
called out to the maid, ``Give me my hand-bag off the sofa.''

  At this the other was _heard_ plainly, ``No, no,'' and
then a little lower, ``You have no tact, Rita. . . .'' Then
came her argument in a low, penetrating voice which I
caught, ``Why not? Between such old friends.'' However,
she waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down,
and their voices sank again. Presently I saw him raise
her hand to his lips, while with her back to the room she
continued to contemplate out of the window the bare
and untidy garden. At last he went out of the room,
throwing to the table an airy ``_Bonjour, bonjour,_'' which
was not acknowledged by any of us three.


			III

  Mills got up and approached the figure at the window. 
To my extreme surprise, Mr. Blunt, after a moment of
obviously painful hesitation, hastened out after the man
with the white hair.

  In consequence of these movements I was left to myself
and I began to be uncomfortably conscious of it when
Do<n~>a Rita, near the window, addressed me in a raised
voice.

  ``We have no confidences to exchange, Mr. Mills and l.''

  I took this for an encouragement to join them. They
were both looking at me. Do<n~>a Rita added, ``Mr. Mills
and I are friends from old times, you know.''

  Bathed in the softened reflection of the sunshine,
which did not fall directly into the room, standing very
straight with her arms down, before Mills, and with a
faint smile directed to me, she looked extremely young,
and yet mature. There was even, for a moment, a slight
dimple in her cheek.

  ``How old, I wonder?'' I said, with an answering smile.

  ``Oh, for ages, for ages,'' she exclaimed hastily, frowning
a little, then she went on addressing herself to Mills,
apparently in continuation of what she was saying before.

  . . . ``This man's is an extreme case, and yet perhaps
it isn't the worst. But that's the sort of thing. I have
no account to render to anybody, but I don't want to be
dragged along all the gutters where that man picks up
his living.''

  She had thrown her head back a little but there was no
scorn, no angry flash under the dark-lashed eyelids. The
words did not ring. I was struck for the first time by the
even, mysterious quality of her voice.

  ``Will you let me suggest,'' said Mills, with a grave,
kindly face, ``that being what you are, you have nothing
to fear?''

  ``And perhaps nothing to lose,'' she went on without
bitterness. ``No. It isn't fear. It's a sort of dread. 
You must remember that no nun could have had a more
protected life. Henry All<e`>gre had his greatness. When
he faced the world he also masked it. He was big enough
for that. He filled the whole field of vision for me.''

  ``You found that enough?'' asked Mills.

  ``Why ask now?'' she remonstrated. ``The truth---
the truth is that I never asked myself. Enough or not
there was no room for anything else. He was the shadow
and the light and the form and the voice. He would
have it so. The morning he died they came to call me
at four o'clock. I ran into his room bare-footed. He
recognized me and whispered, `You are flawless.' I was
very frightened. He seemed to think, and then said very
plainly, `Such is my character. I am like that.' These
were the last words he spoke. I hardly noticed them
then. I was thinking that he was lying in a very uncomfortable
position and I asked him if I should lift him up
a little higher on the pillows. You know I am very
strong. I could have done it. I had done it before. He
raised his hand off the blanket just enough to make a
sign that he didn't want to be touched. It was the last
gesture he made. I hung over him and then---and then
I nearly ran out of the house just as I was, in my nightgown.
I think if I had been dressed I would have run
out of the garden, into the street---run away altogether. 
I had never seen death. I may say I had never heard of it. 
I wanted to run from it.''

  She paused for a long, quiet breath. The harmonized
sweetness and daring of her face was made pathetic by
her downcast eyes.

  ``_Fuir la mort,_'' she repeated, meditatively, in her
mysterious voice.

  Mills' big head had a little movement, nothing more. 
Her glance glided for a moment towards me like a
friendly recognition of my right to be there, before she
began again.

  ``My life might have been described as looking at mankind
from a fourth-floor window for years. When the
end came it was like falling out of a balcony into the
street. It was as sudden as that. Once I remember
somebody was telling us in the Pavilion a tale about a
girl who jumped down from a fourth-floor window. . . . For
love, I believe,'' she interjected very quickly, ``and came
to no harm. Her guardian angel must have slipped his
wings under her just in time. He must have. But as
to me, all I know is that I didn't break anything---not
even my heart. Don't be shocked, Mr. Mills. It's very
likely that you don't understand.''

  ``Very likely,'' Mills assented, unmoved. ``But don't
be too sure of that.''

  ``Henry All<e`>gre had the highest opinion of your intelligence,''
she said unexpectedly and with evident seriousness. 
``But all this is only to tell you that when he was gone I
found myself down there unhurt, but dazed, bewildered,
not sufficiently stunned. It so happened that that
creature was somewhere in the neighbourhood. How he
found out. . . . But it's his business to find out things. 
And he knows, too, how to worm his way in anywhere. 
Indeed, in the first days he was useful and somehow he
made it look as if Heaven itself had sent him. In my
distress I thought I could never sufficiently repay. . .
Well, I have been paying ever since.''

  ``What do you mean?'' asked Mills softly. ``In hard
cash?''

  ``Oh, it's really so little,'' she said. ``I told you it
wasn't the worst case. I stayed on in that house from
which I nearly ran away in my nightgown. I stayed on
because I didn't know what to do next. He vanished as
he had come on the track of something else, I suppose. 
You know he really has got to get his living some way or
other. But don't think I was deserted. On the contrary.
People were coming and going, all sorts of people
that Henry All<e`>gre used to know---or had refused to
know. I had a sensation of plotting and intriguing around
me all the time. I was feeling morally bruised, sore all
over, when, one day, Don Rafael de Villarel sent in his
card. A grandee. I didn't know him, but, as you are
aware, there was hardly a personality of mark or position
that hasn't been talked about in the Pavilion before me. 
Of him I had only heard that he was a very austere and
pious person, always at Mass, and that sort of thing. I
saw a frail little man with a long, yellow face and sunken
fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk. One
missed a rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me
terribly and I couldn't imagine what he might want. I
waited for him to pull out a crucifix and sentence me to
the stake there and then. But no; he dropped his eyes
and in a cold, righteous sort of voice informed me that he
had called on behalf of the prince---he called him His
Majesty. I was amazed by the change. I wondered now
why he didn't slip his hands into the sleeves of his coat,
you know, as begging Friars do when they come for a subscription.
He explained that the Prince asked for permission
to call and offer me his condolences in person. We
had seen a lot of him our last two months in Paris that year. 
Henry All<e`>gre had taken a fancy to paint his portrait. He
used to ride with us nearly every morning. Almost without
thinking I said I should be pleased. Don Rafael was
shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in
silence, very much as a monk bows, from the waist. If he
had only crossed his hands flat on his chest it would have
been perfect. Then, I don't know why, something moved
me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the
room, leaving me suddenly impressed, not only with him
but with myself too. I had my door closed to everybody
else that afternoon and the Prince came with a very proper
sorrowful face, but five minutes after he got into the room
he was laughing as usual, made the whole little house ring
with it. You know his big, irresistible laugh. . . .''

  ``No,'' said Mills, a little abruptly, ``I have never seen
him.''

  ``No,'' she said, surprised, ``and yet you . . .''

  ``I understand,'' interrupted Mills. ``All this is purely
accidental. You must know that I am a solitary man
of books but with a secret taste for adventure which
somehow came out; surprising even me.''

  She listened with that enigmatic. still, under the eyelids
glance, and a friendly turn of the head.

  ``I know you for a frank and loyal gentleman. . . .
Adventure---and books? Ah, the books! Haven't I
turned stacks of them over! Haven't I?''

  ``Yes,'' murmured Mills. ``That's what one does.''

  She put out her hand and laid it lightly on Mills' sleeve.

  ``Listen, I don't need to justify myself, but if I had
known a single woman in the world, if I had only had the
opportunity to observe a single one of them, I would
have been perhaps on my guard. But you know I hadn't. 
The only woman I had anything to do with was myself,
and they say that one can't know oneself. It never
entered my head to be on my guard against his warmth
and his terrible obviousness. You and he were the only
two, infinitely different, people, who didn't approach me
as if I had been a precious object in a collection, an ivory
carving or a piece of Chinese porcelain. That's why I
have kept you in my memory so well. Oh! you were not
obvious! As to him---I soon learned to regret I was not
some object, some beautiful, carved object of bone or
bronze; a rare piece of porcelain, _p<a^>te dure,_ not _p<a^>te
tendre._ A pretty specimen.''

  ``Rare, yes. Even unique,'' said Mills, looking at her
steadily with a smile. ``But don't try to depreciate yourself.
You were never pretty. You are not pretty. You
are worse.''

  Her narrow eyes had a mischievous gleam. ``Do you
find such sayings in your books?'' she asked.

  ``As a matter of fact I have,'' said Mills, with a little
laugh, ``found this one in a book. It was a woman who
said that of herself. A woman far from common, who died
some few years ago. She was an actress. A great artist.''

  ``A great! . . . Lucky person! She had that refuge,
that garment, while I stand here with nothing to protect
me from evil fame; a naked temperament for any
wind to blow upon. Yes, greatness in art is a protection. 
I wonder if there would have been anything in me if I
had tried? But Henry All<e`>gre would never let me try. 
He told me that whatever I could achieve would never
be good enough for what I was. The perfection of flattery!
Was it that he thought I had not talent of any
sort? It's possible. He would know. I've had the idea
since that he was jealous. He wasn't jealous of mankind
any more than he was afraid of thieves for his collection;
but he may have been jealous of what he could see in
me, of some passion that could be aroused. But if so he
never repented. I shall never forget his last words. He
saw me standing beside his bed, defenceless, symbolic
and forlorn, and all he found to say was, `Well, I am like
that.' ''

  I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody
speak with less play of facial muscles. In the fullness
of its life her face preserved a sort of immobility. 
The words seemed to form themselves, fiery or pathetic,
in the air, outside her lips. Their design was hardly disturbed;
a design of sweetness, gravity, and force as if
born from the inspiration of some artist; for I had
never seen anything to come up to it in nature before
or since.

  All this was part of the enchantment she cast over me
and I seemed to notice that Mills had the aspect of a
man under a spell. If he too was a captive then I had
no reason to feel ashamed of my surrender.

  ``And you know,'' she began again abruptly, ``that I
have been accustomed to all the forms of respect.''

  ``That's true,'' murmured Mills, as if involuntarily.

  ``Well, yes,'' she reaffirmed. ``My instinct may have
told me that my only protection was obscurity, but I
didn't know how and where to find it. Oh, yes, I had
that instinct . . . But there were other instincts
and . . . How am I to tell you? I didn't know how
to be on guard against myself, either. Not a soul to
speak to, or to get a warning from. Some woman soul
that would have known, in which perhaps I could have
seen my own reflection. I assure you the only woman
that ever addressed me directly, and that was in writing,
was . . .''

  She glanced aside, saw Mr. Blunt returning from the
hall and added rapidly in a lowered voice,

  ``His mother.''

  The bright, mechanical smile of Mr. Blunt gleamed at
us right down the room, but he didn't, as it were, follow
it in his body. He swerved to the nearest of the two big
fireplaces and finding some cigarettes on the mantelpiece
remained leaning on his elbow in the warmth of the
bright wood fire. I noticed then a bit of mute play. The
heiress of Henry All<e`>gre, who could secure neither obscurity
nor any other alleviation to that invidious position,
looked as if she would speak to Blunt from a distance;
but in a moment the confident eagerness of her
face died out as if killed by a sudden thought. I didn't
know then her shrinking from all falsehood and evasion;
her dread of insincerity and disloyalty of every kind.
But even then I felt that at the very last moment her
being had recoiled before some shadow of a suspicion. 
And it occurred to me, too, to wonder what sort of business
Mr. Blunt could have had to transact with our odious
visitor, of a nature so urgent as to make him run out
after him into the hall? Unless to beat him a little
with one of the sticks that were to be found there? White
hair so much like an expensive wig could not be considered
a serious protection. But it couldn't have been
that. The transaction, whatever it was, had been much
too quiet. I must say that none of us had looked out of
the window and that I didn't know when the man did
go or if he was gone at all. As a matter of fact he was
already far away; and I may just as well say here that I
never saw him again in my life. His passage across my
field of vision was like that of other figures of that time:
not to be forgotten, a little fantastic, infinitely enlightening
for my contempt, darkening for my memory which
struggles still with the clear lights and the ugly shadows
of those unforgotten days.



			IV

  It was past four o'clock before I left the house, together
with Mills. Mr. Blunt, still in his riding costume, escorted
us to the very door. He asked us to send him the first
fiacre we met on our way to town. ``It's impossible to
walk in this get-up through the streets,'' he remarked,
with his brilliant smile.

  At this point I propose to transcribe some notes I
made at the time in little black books which I have
hunted up in the litter of the past; very cheap, common
little note-books that by the lapse of years have acquired
a touching dimness of aspect, the frayed, worn-out dignity
of documents.

  Expression on paper has never been my forte. My life
had been a thing of outward manifestations. I never had
been secret or even systematically taciturn about my
simple occupations which might have been foolish but
had never required either caution or mystery. But in
those four hours since midday a complete change had
come over me. For good or evil I left that house committed
to an enterprise that could not be talked about;
which would have appeared to many senseless and perhaps
ridiculous, but was certainly full of risks, and, apart
from that, commanded discretion on the ground of simple
loyalty. It would not only close my lips but it would
to a certain extent cut me off from my usual haunts and
from the society of my friends; especially of the light-hearted,
young, harum-scarum kind. This was unavoidable.
It was because I felt myself thrown back upon my
own thoughts and forbidden to seek relief amongst other
lives---it was perhaps only for that reason at first that
I started an irregular, fragmentary record of my days.

  I made these notes not so much to preserve the memory
(one cared not for any to-morrow then) but to help
me to keep a better hold of the actuality. I scribbled
them on shore and I scribbled them on the sea; and in
both cases they are concerned not only with the nature
of the facts but with the intensity of my sensations. It
may be, too, that I learned to love the sea for itself only
at that time. Woman and the sea revealed themselves
to me together, as it were: two mistresses of life's values. 
The illimitable greatness of the one, the unfathomable
seduction of the other working their immemorial spells
from generation to generation fell upon my heart at last:
a common fortune, an unforgettable memory of the sea's
formless might and of the sovereign charm in that woman's
form wherein there seemed to beat the pulse of divinity
rather than blood.

  I begin here with the notes written at the end of that
very day.

  ---Parted with Mills on the quay. We had walked
side by side in absolute silence. The fact is he is too old
for me to talk to him freely. For all his sympathy and
seriousness I don't know what note to strike and I am
not at all certain what he thinks of all this. As we shook
hands at parting, I asked him how much longer he expected
to stay. And he answered me that it depended
on R. She was making arrangements for him to cross
the frontier. He wanted to see the very ground on which
the Principle of Legitimacy was actually asserting itself
arms in hand. It sounded to my positive mind the most
fantastic thing in the world, this elimination of personalities
from what seemed but the merest political, dynastic
adventure. So it wasn't Do<n~>a Rita, it wasn't Blunt, it
wasn't the Pretender with his big infectious laugh, it
wasn't all that lot of politicians, archbishops, and generals,
of monks, guerrilleros, and smugglers by sea and land,
of dubious agents and shady speculators and undoubted
swindlers, who were pushing their fortunes at the risk of
their precious skins. No. It was the Legitimist Principle
asserting itself! Well, I would accept the view but
with one reservation. All the others might have been
merged into the idea, but I, the latest recruit, I would
not be merged in the Legitimist Principle. Mine was an
act of independent assertion. Never before had I felt so
intensely aware of my personality. But I said nothing of
that to Mills. I only told him I thought we had better
not be seen very often together in the streets. He agreed. 
Hearty handshake. Looked affectionately after his broad
back. It never occurred to him to turn his head. What
was I in comparison with the Principle of Legitimacy?

  Late that night I went in search of Dominic. That
Mediterranean sailor was just the man I wanted. He
had a great experience of all unlawful things that can be
done on the seas and he brought to the practice of them
much wisdom and audacity. That I didn't know where
he lived was nothing since I knew where he loved. The
proprietor of a small, quiet caf<e'> on the quay, a certain
Madame L<e'>onore, a woman of thirty-five with an open
Roman face and intelligent black eyes, had captivated
his heart years ago. In that caf<e'> with our heads close
together over a marble table, Dominic and I held an
earnest and endless confabulation while Madame
L<e'>onore, rustling a black silk skirt, with gold earrings,
with her raven hair elaborately dressed and something
nonchalant in her movements, would take occasion,
in passing to and fro, to rest her hand for a moment on
Dominic's shoulder. Later when the little caf<e'> had
emptied itself of its habitual customers, mostly people
connected with the work of ships and cargoes, she came
quietly to sit at our table and looking at me very hard
with her black, sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly
what had happened to his Signorino. It was her name
for me. I was Dominic's Signorino. She knew me
by no other; and our connection has always been somewhat
of a riddle to her. She said that I was somehow
changed since she saw me last. In her rich voice she 
urged Dominic only to look at my eyes. I must have
had some piece of luck come to me either in love or at
cards, she bantered. But Dominic answered half in
scorn that I was not of the sort that runs after that kind
of luck. He stated generally that there were some young
gentlemen very clever in inventing new ways of getting
rid of their time and their money. However, if they
needed a sensible man to help them he had no objection
himself to lend a hand. Dominic's general scorn for the
beliefs, and activities, and abilities of upper-class people
covered the Principle of Legitimacy amply; but he could
not resist the opportunity to exercise his special faculties
in a field he knew of old. He had been a desperate smuggler
in his younger days. We settled the purchase of a fast
sailing craft. Agreed that it must be a balancelle and
something altogether out of the common. He knew of
one suitable but she was in Corsica. Offered to start for
Bastia by mail-boat in the morning. All the time the
handsome and mature Madame L<e'>onore sat by, smiling
faintly, amused at her great man joining like this in a
frolic of boys. She said the last words of that evening
``You men never grow up,'' touching lightly the grey
hair above his temple.

  A fortnight later.

  . . . In the afternoon to the Prado. Beautiful day. 
At the moment of ringing at the door a strong emotion
of an anxious kind. Why? Down the length of the
dining-room in the rotunda part full of afternoon light
Do<n~>a R., sitting cross-legged on the divan in the attitude
of a very old idol or a very young child and surrounded
by many cushions, waves her hand from afar pleasantly
surprised, exclaiming: ``What! Back already!'' I give
her all the details and we talk for two hours across a
large brass bowl containing a little water placed between
us, lighting cigarettes and dropping them, innumerable,
puffed at, yet untasted in the overwhelming interest of
the conversation. Found her very quick in taking the
points and very intelligent in her suggestions. All
formality soon vanished between us and before very
long I discovered myself sitting cross-legged, too, while I
held forth on the qualities of different Mediterranean
sailing craft and on the romantic qualifications of Dominic
for the task. I believe I gave her the whole history
of the man, mentioning even the existence of Madame
L<e'>onore, since the little caf<e'> would have to be the headquarters
of the marine part of the plot.

  She murmured, ``_Ah! Une belle Romaine,_'' thoughtfully.
She told me that she liked to hear people of that
sort spoken of in terms of our common humanity. She
observed also that she wished to see Dominic some day;
to set her eyes for once on a man who could be absolutely
depended on, She wanted to know whether he had
engaged himself in this adventure solely for my sake.

  I said that no doubt it was partly that. We had been
very close associates in the West Indies from where we
had returned together, and he had a notion that I could
be depended on, too. But mainly, I suppose, it was from
taste. And there was in him also a fine carelessness as to
what he did and a love of venturesome enterprise.
  
  ``And you,'' she said. ``Is it carelessness, too?''

  ``In a measure,'' I said. ``Within limits.''

  ``And very soon you will get tired.''

  ``When I do I will tell you. But I may also get frightened.
I suppose you know there are risks, I mean apart
from the risk of life.''

  ``As for instance,'' she said.

  ``For instance, being captured, tried, and sentenced to
what they call `the galleys,' in Ceuta.''

  ``And all this from that love for . . .''

  ``Not for Legitimacy,'' I interrupted the inquiry lightly.
``But what's the use asking such questions? It's like
asking the veiled figure of fate. It doesn't know its own
mind nor its own heart. It has no heart. But what if I
were to start asking you---who have a heart and are
not veiled to my sight?'' She dropped her charming
adolescent head, so firm in modelling, so gentle in expression.
Her uncovered neck was round like the shaft
of a column. She wore the same wrapper of thick blue
silk. At that time she seemed to live either in her riding
habit or in that wrapper folded tightly round her and open
low to a point in front. Because of the absence of all
trimming round the neck and from the deep view of her
bare arms in the wide sleeve this garment seemed to be put
directly on her skin and gave one the impression of one's
nearness to her body which would have been troubling
but for the perfect unconsciousness of her manner. That
day she carried no barbarous arrow in her hair. It was
parted on one side, brushed back severely, and tied with a
black ribbon, without any bronze mist about her forehead
or temple. This smoothness added to the many varieties
of her expression also that of child-like innocence.

  Great progress in our intimacy brought about unconsciously
by our enthusiastic interest in the matter of our
discourse and, in the moments of silence, by the sympathetic
current of our thoughts. And this rapidly growing.
familiarity (truly, she had a terrible gift for it) had all
the varieties of earnestness: serious, excited, ardent,
and even gay. She laughed in contralto; but her laugh
was never very long; and when it had ceased, the silence
of the room with the light dying in all its many windows
seemed to he about me warmed by its vibration.

  As I was preparing to take my leave after a longish
pause into which we had fallen as into a vague dream, she
came out of it with a start and a quiet sigh. She said, ``I
had forgotten myself.'' I took her hand and was raising it
naturally, without premeditation, when I felt suddenly
the arm to which it belonged become insensible, passive,
like a stuffed limb, and the whole woman go inanimate
all over! Brusquely I dropped the hand before it reached
my lips; and it was so lifeless that it fell heavily on to the
divan.

  I remained standing before her. She raised to me not her
eyes but her whole face, inquisitively---perhaps in appeal.

  ``No! this isn't good enough for me,'' I said.

  The last of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic
eyes as if they were precious enamel in that shadowy
head which in its immobility suggested a creation of a
distant past: immortal art, not transient life. Her voice
had a profound quietness. She excused herself.

  ``It's only habit---or instinct---or what you like. I
have had to practise that in self-defence lest I should be
tempted sometimes to cut the arm off.''

  I remembered the way she had abandoned this very
arm and hand to the white-haired ruffian. It rendered
me gloomy and idiotically obstinate.

  ``Very ingenious. But this sort of thing is of no use to
me,'' I declared.

  ``Make it up,'' suggested her mysterious voice, while
her shadowy figure remained unmoved, indifferent amongst
the cushions.

  I didn't stir either. I refused in the same low tone.

  ``No. Not before you give it to me yourself, some day.''

  ``Yes---some day,'' she repeated in a breath in which
there was no irony but rather hesitation, reluctance---
what did I know?

  I walked away from the house in a curious state of
gloomy satisfaction with myself.

			*

  And this is the last extract. A month afterwards.

  ---This afternoon going up to the Villa I was for the
first time accompanied in my way by some misgivings.

  To-morrow I sail.

  First trip and therefore in the nature of a trial trip
and I can't overcome a certain gnawing emotion, for it
is a trip that _mustn't_ fail. In that sort of enterprise there
is no room for mistakes. Of all the individuals engaged
in it will every one be intelligent enough, faithful enough,
bold enough? Looking upon them as a whole it seems
impossible; but as each has got only a limited part to play
they may be found sufficient each for his particular trust. 
And will they be all punctual, I wonder? An enterprise
that hangs on the punctuality of many people, no matter
how well disposed and even heroic, hangs on a thread. 
This I have perceived to be also the greatest of Dominic's
concerns. He, too, wonders. And when he breathes his
doubts the smile lurking under the dark curl of his moustaches
is not reassuring.

  But there is also something exciting in such speculations
and the road to the Villa seemed to me shorter than
ever before.

  Let in by the silent, ever-active, dark lady's maid, who
is always on the spot and always on the way somewhere
else, opening the door with one hand, while she passes on,
turning on one for a moment her quick, black eyes, which
just miss being lustrous, as if some one had breathed on
them lightly.

  On entering the long room I perceive Mills established
in an armchair which he had dragged in front of the
divan. I do the same to another and there we sit side
by side facing R., tenderly amiable yet somehow distant
among her cushions, with an immemorial seriousness in
her long, shaded eyes and her fugitive smile hovering
about but never settling on her lips. Mills, who is just
back from over the frontier, must have been asking R.
whether she had been worried again by her devoted
friend with the white hair. At least I concluded so
because I found them talking of the heart-broken Azzolati. 
And after having answered their greetings I sit and listen
to Rita addressing Mills earnestly.

  ``No, I assure you Azzolati had done nothing to me. 
I knew him. He was a frequent visitor at the Pavilion,
though I, personally, never talked with him very much
in Henry All<e`>gre's lifetime. Other men were more interesting,
and he himself was rather reserved in his manner
to me. He was an international politician and financier---
a nobody. He, like many others, was admitted only to
feed and amuse Henry All<e`>gre's scorn of the world, which
was insatiable---I tell you.''

  ``Yes,'' said Mills. ``I can imagine.''

  ``But I know. Often when we were alone Henry All<e`>gre
used to pour it into my ears. If ever anybody saw mankind
stripped of its clothes as the child sees the king in the
German fairy tale, it's I! Into my ears! A child's! Too
young to die of fright. Certainly not old enough to understand---
or even to believe. But then his arm was about
me. I used to laugh, sometimes. Laugh! At this destruction---
at these ruins!''

  ``Yes,'' said Mills, very steady before her fire. ``But
you have at your service the everlasting charm of life; you
are a part of the indestructible.''

  ``Am I? . . . But there is no arm about me now.
The laugh! Where is my laugh? Give me back my
laugh. . . .''

  And she laughed a little on a low note. I don't know
about Mills, but the subdued shadowy vibration of it
echoed in my breast which felt empty for a moment and
like a large space that makes one giddy.

  ``The laugh is gone out of my heart, which at any rate
used to feel protected. That feeling's gone, too. And I
myself will have to die some day.''

  ``Certainly,'' said Mills in an unaltered voice. ``As to
this body you . . .''

  ``Oh, yes! Thanks. It's a very poor jest. Change
from body to body as travellers used to change horses at
post houses. I've heard of this before. . . . ''

  ``I've no doubt you have,'' Mills put on a submissive
air. ``But are we to hear any more about Azzolati?''

  ``You shall. Listen. I had heard that he was invited
to shoot at Rambouillet---a quiet party, not one of these
great shoots. I hear a lot of things. I wanted to have a
certain information, also certain hints conveyed to a diplomatic
personage who was to be there, too. A personage
that would never let me get in touch with him though I
had tried many times.''

  ``Incredible!'' mocked Mills solemnly.

  ``The personage mistrusts his own susceptibility. Born
cautious,'' explained Do<n~>a Rita crisply with the slightest
possible quiver of her lips. ``Suddenly I had the inspiration
to make use of Azzolati, who had been reminding me
by a constant stream of messages that he was an old
friend. I never took any notice of those pathetic appeals
before. But in this emergency I sat down and wrote a
note asking him to come and dine with me in my hotel. 
I suppose you know I don't live in the Pavilion. I can't
bear the Pavilion now. When I have to go there I begin
to feel after an hour or so that it is haunted. I seem to
catch sight of somebody I know behind columns, passing
through doorways, vanishing here and there. I hear light
footsteps behind closed doors. . . . My own!''

  Her eyes, her half-parted lips, remained fixed till Mills
suggested softly, ``Yes, but Azzolati.''

  Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine.
``Oh! Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It
had occurred to me to make a very elaborate toilet. It
was most successful. Azzolati looked positively scared
for a moment as though he had got into the wrong suite
of rooms. He had never before seen me _en toilette,_ you
understand. In the old days once out of my riding habit
I would never dress. I draped myself, you remember,
Monsieur Mills. To go about like that suited my indolence,
my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time
when I used to herd goats. . . . But never mind. My
aim was to impress Azzolati. I wanted to talk to him
seriously.''

  There was something whimsical in the quick beat of
her eyelids and in the subtle quiver of her lips. ``And
behold! the same notion had occurred to Azzolati. Imagine
that for this t<e^>te-<a`>-t<e^>te dinner the creature had got himself
up as if for a reception at court. He displayed a brochette
of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his _frac_ and had a
broad ribbon of some order across his shirt front. An
orange ribbon. Bavarian, I should say. Great Roman
Catholic, Azzolati. It was always his ambition to be
the banker of all the Bourbons in the world. The last
remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of
his moustache were like knitting needles. He was disposed
to be as soft as wax in my hands. Unfortunately
I had had some irritating interviews during the day. I
was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw
a plate on the floor, do something violent to relieve my
feelings. His submissive attitude made me still more
nervous, He was ready to do anything in the world for
me providing that I would promise him that he would never
find my door shut against him as long as he lived. You
understand the impudence of it, don't you? And his tone
was positively abject, too. I snapped back at him that I
had no door, that I was a nomad. He bowed ironically
till his nose nearly touched his plate but begged me to
remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses
of my own about the world. And you know this made
me feet a homeless outcast more than ever---like a little dog
lost in the street---not knowing where to go. I was ready
to cry and there the creature sat in front of me with an
imbecile smile as much as to say `here is a poser for
you. . . .' I gnashed my teeth at him. Quietly, you
know . . . I suppose you two think that I am stupid.''

  She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no
sound and she continued with a remark.

  ``I have days like that. Often one must listen to false
protestations, empty words, strings of lies all day long,
so that in the evening one is not fit for anything, not
even for truth if it comes in one's way. That idiot treated
me to a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn't stand. 
First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he
boasted of his great affairs, then started groaning about
his overstrained life which left him no time for the amenities
of existence, for beauty, or sentiment, or any sort of
ease of heart. His heart! He wanted me to sympathize
with his sorrows. Of course I ought to have listened. 
One must pay for service. Only I was nervous and tired. 
He bored me. I told him at last that I was surprised
that a man of such immense wealth should still keep on
going like this reaching for more and more. I suppose
he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we
talked and all at once he let out an atrocity which was
too much for me. He had been moaning and sentimentalizing
but then suddenly he showed me his fangs. `No,'
he cries, `you can't imagine what a satisfaction it is to
feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the dear, honest,
meritorious poor wriggling and slobbering under one's
boots.' You may tell me that he is a contemptible animal
anyhow, but you should have heard the tone! I felt my
bare arms go cold like ice. A moment before I had been
hot and faint with sheer boredom. I jumped up from the
table, rang for Rose, and told her to bring me my fur cloak. 
He remained in his chair leering at me curiously. When
I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had gone out of
the room I gave him the surprise of his life. `Take yourself
off instantly,' I said. `Go trample on the poor if you
like but never dare speak to me again.' At this he leaned
his head on his arm and sat so long at the table shading
his eyes with his hand that I had to ask, calmly---you
know---whether he wanted me to have him turned out
into the corridor. He fetched an enormous sigh. `I
have only tried to be honest with you, Rita.' But by
the time he got to the door he had regained some of his
impudence. `You know how to trample on a poor fellow,
too,' he said. `But I don't mind being made to wriggle
under your pretty shoes, Rita. I forgive you. I thought
you were free from all vulgar sentimentalism and that
you had a more independent mind. I was mistaken
in you, that's all.' With that he pretends to dash a tear
from his eye---crocodile!---and goes out, leaving me in
my fur by the blazing fire, my teeth going like castanets.
. . . Did you ever hear of anything so stupid as this affair?''
she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a profound
unreadable stare that went far beyond us both. And the
stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased speaking
that I wondered whether all this had come through
them or only had formed itself in my mind.

  Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.

  ``It's like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly
toads staring at you. In everyone. Everyone. That's
what it is having to do with men more than mere---Good-morning---
Good evening. And if you try to avoid meddling
with their lids, some of them will take them off
themselves. And they don't even know, they don't even
suspect what they are showing you. Certain confidences
---they don't see it---are the bitterest kind of insult. I
suppose Azzolati imagines himself a noble beast of prey. 
Just as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate,
noble, and refined gentlemen. And as likely as not they
would trade on a woman's troubles---and in the end
make nothing of that either. Idiots!''

  The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation
gave it a character of touching simplicity. And as
if it had been truly only a meditation we conducted ourselves
as though we had not heard it. Mills began to
speak of his experiences during his visit to the army of
the Legitimist King. And I discovered in his speeches
that this man of books could be graphic and picturesque. 
His admiration for the devotion and bravery of the army
was combined with the greatest distaste for what he had
seen of the way its great qualities were misused. In the
conduct of this great enterprise he had seen a deplorable
levity of outlook, a fatal lack of decision, an absence of
any reasoned plan.

  He shook his head.

  ``I feel that you of all people, Do<n~>a Rita, ought to be
told the truth. I don't know exactly what you have at
stake.''

  She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in
the flush of the dawn.

  ``Not my heart,'' she said quietly. ``You must believe
that.''

  ``I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you . . .''

  ``No, _Monsieur le Philosophe._ It would not have been
better. Don't make that serious face at me,'' she went on
with tenderness in a playful note, as if tenderness had been
her inheritance of all time and playfulness the very fibre
of her being. ``I suppose you think that a woman who
has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on it is
. . . How do you know to what the heart responds as it
beats from day to day?''

  ``I wouldn't judge you. What am I before the knowledge
you were born to? You are as old as the world.''

  She accepted this with a smile. I who was innocently
watching them was amazed to discover how much a fleeting
thing like that could hold of seduction without the help
of any other feature and with that unchanging glance.

  ``With me it is _pun d'onor_. To my first independent
friend.''

  ``You were soon parted,'' ventured Mills, while I sat
still under a sense of oppression.

  ``Don't think for a moment that I have been scared
off,'' she said. ``It is they who were frightened. I
suppose you heard a lot of Headquarters gossip?''

  ``Oh, yes,'' Mills said meaningly. ``The fair and the
dark are succeeding each other like leaves blown in the
wind dancing in and out. I suppose you have noticed
that leaves blown in the wind have a look of happiness.''

  ``Yes,'' she said, ``that sort of leaf is dead. Then
why shouldn't it look happy? And so I suppose there
is no uneasiness, no occasion for fears amongst the `responsibles.' ''

  ``Upon the whole not. Now and then a leaf seems as
if it would stick. There is for instance Madame . . .''

  ``Oh, I don't want to know, I understand it all, I am
as old as the world.''

  ``Yes,'' said Mills thoughtfully, ``you are not a leaf,
you might have been a tornado yourself.''

  ``Upon my word,'' she said, ``there was a time that
they thought I could carry him off, away from them all
---beyond them all. Verily, I am not very proud of
their fears. There was nothing reckless there worthy of
a great passion. There was nothing sad there worthy of a
great tenderness.''

  ``And is _this_ the word of the Venetian riddle?'' asked
Mills, fixing her with his keen eyes.

  ``If it pleases you to think so, Se<n~>or,'' she said indifferently.
The movement of her eyes, their veiled gleam
became mischievous when she asked, ``And Don Juan
Blunt, have you seen him over there?''

  ``I fancy he avoided me. Moreover, he is always with
his regiment at the outposts. He is a most valorous
captain. I heard some people describe him as foolhardy.''

  ``Oh, he needn't seek death,'' she said in an indefinable
tone. ``I mean as a refuge. There will be nothing
in his life great enough for that.''

  ``You are angry. You miss him, I believe, Do<n~>a
Rita.''

  ``Angry? No! Weary. But of course it's very inconvenient.
I can't very well ride out alone. A solitary
amazon swallowing the dust and the salt spray of the
Corniche promenade would attract too much attention. 
And then I don't mind you two knowing that I am afraid
of going out alone.''

  ``Afraid?'' we both exclaimed together.

  ``You men are extraordinary. Why do you want me
to be courageous? Why shouldn't I be afraid? Is it
because there is no one in the world to care what would
happen to me?''

  There was a deep-down vibration in her tone for the
first time. We had not a word to say. And she added
after a long silence:

  ``There is a very good reason. There is a danger.''

  With wonderful insight Mills affirmed at once:

  ``Something ugly.''

  She nodded slightly several times. Then Mills said
with conviction:

  ``Ah! Then it can't be anything in yourself. And if
so . . .''

  I was moved to extravagant advice.

  ``You should come out with me to sea then. There
may be some danger there but there's nothing ugly to
fear.''

  She gave me a startled glance quite unusual with her,
more than wonderful to me; and suddenly as though she
had seen me for the first time she exclaimed in a tone of
compunction:

  ``Oh! And there is this one, too! Why! Oh, why
should he run his head into danger for those things that
will all crumble into dust before long?''

  I said: ``_You_ won't crumble into dust.''

  And Mills claimed in:

  ``That young enthusiast will always have his sea.''

  We were all standing up now. She kept her eyes on
me, and repeated with a sort of whimsical enviousness:

  ``The sea! The violet sea---and he is longing to rejoin
it! . . . At night! Under the stars! . . . A lovers'
meeting,'' she went on, thrilling me from head to foot
with those two words, accompanied by a wistful smile
pointed by a suspicion of mockery. She turned away.
``And you, Monsieur Mills?'' she asked.

  ``I am going back to my books,'' he declared with a
very serious face. ``My adventure is over.''

  ``Each one to his love,'' she bantered us gently.
``Didn't I love books, too, at one time! They seemed to
contain all wisdom and hold a magic power, too. Tell me,
Monsieur Mills, have you found amongst them in some
black-letter volume the power of foretelling a poor mortal's
destiny, the power to look into the future? Anybody's
future . . .'' Mills shook his head. . . . What, not
even mine?'' she coaxed as if she really believed in a
magic power to be found in books.

  Mills shook his head again. ``No, I have not the
power,'' he said. ``I am no more a great magician, than
you are a poor mortal. You have your ancient spells. 
You are as old as the world. Of us two it's you that are
more fit to foretell the future of the poor mortals on
whom you happen to cast your eyes.''

  At these words she cast her eyes down and in the moment
of deep silence I watched the slight rising and falling
of her breast. Then Mills pronounced distinctly:

  ``Good-bye, old Enchantress.''

  They shook hands cordially. ``Good-bye, poor Magician,''
she said.

  Mills made as if to speak but seemed to think better
of it. Do<n~>a Rita returned my distant bow with a slight,
charmingly ceremonious inclination of her body.

  ``_Bon voyage_ and a happy return,'' she said formally.

  I was following Mills through the door when I heard
her voice behind us raised in recall:

  ``Oh, a moment . . . I forgot . . .''

  I turned round. The call was for me, and I walked
slowly back wondering what she could have forgotten. 
She waited in the middle of the room with lowered head,
with a mute gleam in her deep blue eyes. When I was
near enough she extended to me without a word her bare
white arm and suddenly pressed the back of her hand
against my lips. I was too startled to seize it with
rapture. It detached itself from my lips and fell slowly
by her side. We had made it up and there was nothing
to say. She turned away to the window and I hurried
out of the room.



		    PART THREE

			I

  It was on our return from that first trip that I took Dominic
up to the Villa to be presented to Do<n~>a Rita. If she
wanted to look on the embodiment of fidelity, resource,
and courage, she could behold it all in that man. Apparently
she was not disappointed. Neither was Dominic
disappointed. During the half-hour's interview they got
into touch with each other in a wonderful way as if they
had some common and secret standpoint in life. Maybe
it was their common lawlessness, and their knowledge
of things as old as the world. Her seduction, his recklessness,
were both simple, masterful and, in a sense,
worthy of each other.

  Dominic was, I won't say awed by this interview. No
woman could awe Dominic. But he was, as it were, rendered
thoughtful by it, like a man who had not so much
an experience as a sort of revelation vouchsafed to film. 
Later, at sea, he used to refer to La Se<n~>ora in a particular
tone and I knew that henceforth his devotion was not
for me alone. And I understood the inevitability of it
extremely well. As to Do<n~>a Rita she, after Dominic left
the room, had turned to me with animation and said:
``But he is perfect, this man.'' Afterwards she often
asked after him and used to refer to him in conversation. 
More than once she said to me: ``One would like to put
the care of one's personal safety into the hands of that
man. He looks as if he simply couldn't fail one.'' I
admitted that this was very true, especially at sea. 
Dominic couldn't fail. But at the same time I rather
chaffed Rita on her preoccupation as to personal safety
that so often cropped up in her talk.

  ``One would think you were a crowned head in a revolutionary
world,'' I used to tell her.

  ``That would be different. One would be standing
then for something, either worth or not worth dying for. 
One could even run away then and be done with it. But
I can't run away unless I got out of my skin and left
that behind. Don't you understand? You are very
stupid . . .'' But she had the grace to add, ``On
purpose.''

  I don't know about the on purpose. I am not certain
about the stupidity. Her words bewildered one often
and bewilderment is a sort of stupidity. I remedied it
by simply disregarding the sense of what she said. The
sound was there and also her poignant heart-gripping
presence giving occupation enough to one's faculties. In
the power of those things over one there was mystery
enough. It was more absorbing than the mere obscurity
of her speeches. But I daresay she couldn't understand
that.

  Hence, at times, the amusing outbreaks of temper in
word and gesture that only strengthened the natural, the
invincible force of the spell. Sometimes the brass bowl
would get upset or the cigarette box would fly up, dropping
a shower of cigarettes on the floor. We would pick
them up, re-establish everything, and fall into a long
silence, so close that the sound of the first word would
come with all the pain of a separation.

  It was at that time, too, that she suggested I should
take up my quarters in her house in the street of the
Consuls. There were certain advantages in that move. 
In my present abode my sudden absences might have
been in the long run subject to comment. On the other
hand, the house in the street of Consuls was a known outpost
of Legitimacy. But then it was covered by the
occult influence of her who was referred to in confidential
talks, secret communications, and discreet whispers of
Royalist salons as: ``Madame de Lastaola.''

  That was the name which the heiress of Henry All<e`>gre
had decided to adopt when, according to her own expression,
she had found herself precipitated at a moment's
notice into the crowd of mankind. It is strange how the
death of Henry All<e`>gre, which certainly the poor man
had not planned, acquired in my view the character of a
heartless desertion. It gave one a glimpse of amazing
egoism in a sentiment to which one could hardly give a
name, a mysterious appropriation of one human being by
another as if in defiance of unexpressed things and for an
unheard-of satisfaction of an inconceivable pride. If he
had hated her he could not have flung that enormous fortune
more brutally at her head. And his unrepentant
death seemed to lift for a moment the curtain on something
lofty and sinister like an Olympian's caprice.

  Do<n~>a Rita said to me once with humorous resignation:
``You know, it appears that one must have a
name. That's what Henry All<e`>gre's man of business told
me. He was quite impatient with me about it. But my
name, _amigo_, Henry All<e`>gre had taken from me like all
the rest of what I had been once. All that is buried with
him in his grave. It wouldn't have been true. That is
how I felt about it. So I took that one.'' She whispered
to herself: ``Lastaola,'' not as if to test the sound but
as if in a dream.

  To this day I am not quite certain whether it was the
name of any human habitation, a lonely _caserio_ with a
half-effaced carving of a coat of arms over its door, or of
some hamlet at the dead end of a ravine with a stony
slope at the back. It might have been a hill for all I
know or perhaps a stream. A wood, or perhaps a combination
of all these: just a bit of the earth's surface. 
Once I asked her where exactly it was situated and she
answered, waving her hand cavalierly at the dead wall of
the room: ``Oh, over there.'' I thought that this was
all that I was going to hear but she added moodily, ``I
used to take my goats there, a dozen or so of them, for the
day. From after my uncle had said his Mass till the
ringing of the evening bell.''

  I saw suddenly the lonely spot, sketched for me some
time ago by a few words from Mr. Blunt, populated
by the agile, bearded beasts with cynical heads, and a
little misty figure dark in the sunlight with a halo of
dishevelled rust-coloured hair about its head.

  The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her. It was
really tawny. Once or twice in my hearing she had
referred to ``my rust-coloured hair'' with laughing vexation.
Even then it was unruly, abhorring the restraints
of civilization, and often in the heat of a dispute getting
into the eyes of Madame de Lastaola, the possessor of
coveted art treasures, the heiress of Henry All<e`>gre. She
proceeded in a reminiscent mood, with a faint flash of
gaiety all over her face, except her dark blue eyes that
moved so seldom out of their fixed scrutiny of things
invisible to other human beings.

  ``The goats were very good. We clambered amongst
the stones together. They beat me at that game. I used
to catch my hair in the bushes.''

  ``Your rust-coloured hair,'' I whispered.

  ``Yes, it was always this colour. And I used to leave
bits of my frock on thorns here and there. It was pretty
thin, I can tell you. There wasn't much at that time between
my skin and the blue of the sky. My legs were as
sunburnt as my face; but really I didn't tan very much.
I had plenty of freckles though. There were no looking-glasses
in the Presbytery but uncle had a piece not bigger
than my two hands for his shaving. One Sunday I crept
into his room and had a peep at myself. And wasn't I
startled to see my own eyes looking at me! But it was
fascinating, too. I was about eleven years old then, and I
was very friendly with the goats, and I was as shrill as a
cicada and as slender as a match. Heavens! When I
overhear myself speaking sometimes, or look at my limbs,
it doesn't seem to be possible. And yet it is the same
one. I do remember every single goat. They were very
clever. Goats are no trouble really; they don't scatter
much. Mine never did even if I had to hide myself out
of their sight for ever so long.''

  It was but natural to ask her why she wanted to hide,
and she uttered vaguely what was rather a comment on
my question:

  ``It was like fate.'' But I chose to take it otherwise,
teasingly, because we were often like a pair of children.

  ``Oh, really,'' I said, ``you talk like a pagan. What
could you know of fate at that time? What was it like?
Did it come down from Heaven?''

  ``Don't be stupid. It used to come along a cart-track
that was there and it looked like a boy. Wasn't he a
little devil though. You understand, I couldn't know that. 
He was a wealthy cousin of mine. Round there we are
all related, all cousins---as in Brittany. He wasn't
much bigger than myself but he was older, just a boy in
blue breeches and with good shoes on his feet, which of
course interested and impressed me. He yelled to me
from below, I screamed to him from above, he came up
and sat down near me on a stone, never said a word, let
me look at him for half an hour before he condescended
to ask me who I was. And the airs he gave himself! He
quite intimidated me sitting there perfectly dumb. I
remember trying to hide my bare feet under the edge of
my skirt as I sat below him on the ground.

  ``_C'est comique, eh!_'' she interrupted herself to comment
in a melancholy tone. I looked at her sympathetically
and she went on:

  ``He was the only son from a rich farmhouse two miles
down the slope. In winter they used to send him to
school at Tolosa. He had an enormous opinion of himself;
he was going to keep a shop in a town by and by and he
was about the most dissatisfied creature I have ever seen. 
He had an unhappy mouth and unhappy eyes and he was
always wretched about something: about the treatment
he received, about being kept in the country and chained to
work. He was moaning and complaining and threatening
all the world, including his father and mother. He
used to curse God, yes, that boy, sitting there on a piece
of rock like a wretched little Prometheus with a sparrow
pecking at his miserable little liver. And the grand
scenery of mountains all round, ha, ha, ha!''

  She laughed in contralto: a penetrating sound with
something generous in it; not infectious, but in others
provoking a smile.

  ``Of course I, poor little animal, I didn't know what to
make of it, and I was even a little frightened. But at
first because of his miserable eyes I was sorry for him,
almost as much as if he had been a sick goat. But,
frightened or sorry, I don't know how it is, I always
wanted to laugh at him, too, I mean from the very first
day when he let me admire him for half an hour. Yes,
even then I had to put my hand over my mouth more
than once for the sake of good manners, you understand. 
And yet, you know, I was never a laughing child.

  ``One day he came up and sat down very dignified a
little bit away from me and told me he had been thrashed
for wandering in the hills.

  `` `To be with me?' I asked. And he said: `To be
with you! No. My people don't know what I do.' I
can't tell why, but I was annoyed. So instead of raising
a clamour of pity over him, which I suppose he expected
me to do, I asked him if the thrashing hurt very much. 
He got up, he had a switch in his hand, and walked up
to me, saying, `I will soon show you.' I went stiff with
fright; but instead of slashing at me he dropped down
by my side and kissed me on the cheek. Then he did it
again, and by that time I was gone dead all over and he
could have done what he liked with the corpse but he
left off suddenly and then I came to life again and I
bolted away. Not very far. I couldn't leave the goats
altogether. He chased me round and about the rocks,
but of course I was too quick for him in his nice town
boots. When he got tired of that game he started throwing
stones. After that he made my life very lively for me. 
Sometimes he used to come on me unawares and then I
had to sit still and listen to his miserable ravings, because
he would catch me round the waist and hold me very tight. 
And yet I often felt inclined to laugh. But if I caught
sight of him at a distance and tried to dodge out of the way
he would start stoning me into a shelter I knew of and then
sit outside with a heap of stones at hand so that I daren't
show the end of my nose for hours. He would sit there
and rave and abuse me till I would burst into a crazy
laugh in my hole; and then I could see him through the
leaves rolling on the ground and biting his fists with
rage. Didn't he hate me! At the same time I was often
terrified. I am convinced now that if I had started crying
he would have rushed in and perhaps strangled me
there. Then as the sun was about to set he would make
me swear that I would marry him when I was grown up.
`Swear, you little wretched beggar,' he would yell to me. 
And I would swear. I was hungry, and I didn't want to
be made black and blue all over with stones. Oh, I
swore ever so many times to be his wife. Thirty times a
month for two months. I couldn't help myself. It was no
use complaining to my sister Therese. When I showed
her my bruises and tried to tell her a little about my
trouble she was quite scandalized. She called me a sinful
girl, a shameless creature. I assure you it puzzled
my head so that, between Therese my sister and Jos<e'>
the boy, I lived in a state of idiocy almost. But luckily
at the end of the two months they sent him away from
home for good. Curious story to happen to a goatherd
living all her days out under God's eye, as my uncle the
Cura might have said. My sister Therese was keeping
house in the Presbytery. She's a terrible person.''

  ``I have heard of your sister Therese,'' I said.

  ``Oh, you have! Of my big sister Therese, six, ten
years older than myself perhaps? She just comes a little
above my shoulder, but then I was always a long thing. 
I never knew my mother. I don't even know how she
looked. There are no paintings or photographs in our
farmhouses amongst the hills. I haven't even heard her
described to me. I believe I was never good enough to
be told these things. Therese decided that I was a lump
of wickedness, and now she believes that I will lose my
soul altogether unless I take some steps to save it. Well,
I have no particular taste that way. I suppose it is annoying
to have a sister going fast to eternal perdition,
but there are compensations. The funniest thing is that
it's Therese, I believe, who managed to keep me out of
the Presbytery when I went out of my way to look in on
them on my return from my visit to the _Quartel Real_ last
year. I couldn't have stayed much more than half an hour
with them anyway, but still I would have liked to get over
the old doorstep. I am certain that Therese persuaded
my uncle to go out and meet me at the bottom of the hill.
I saw the old man a long way off and I understood how
it was. I dismounted at once and met him on foot. We
had half an hour together walking up and down the
road. He is a peasant priest, he didn't know how to
treat me. And of course I was uncomfortable, too. 
There wasn't a single goat about to keep me in countenance.
I ought to have embraced him. I was always
fond of the stern, simple old man. But he drew himself
up when I approached him and actually took off his hat
to me. So simple as that! I bowed my head and asked
for his blessing. And he said `I would never refuse a
blessing to a good Legitimist.' So stern as that! And
when I think that I was perhaps the only girl of the
family or in the whole world that he ever in his priest's
life patted on the head! When I think of that I . . .
I believe at that moment I was as wretched as he was
himself. I handed him an envelope with a big red seal
which quite startled him. I had asked the Marquis de
Villarel to give me a few words for him, because my
uncle has a great influence in his district; and the Marquis
penned with his own hand some compliments and
an inquiry about the spirit of the population. My uncle
read the letter, looked up at me with an air of mournful
awe, and begged me to tell his excellency that the people
were all for God, their lawful King and their old privileges.
I said to him then, after he had asked me about
the health of His Majesty in an awfully gloomy tone---I
said then: `There is only one thing that remains for
me to do, uncle, and that is to give you two pounds of
the very best snuff I have brought here for you.' What
else could I have got for the poor old man? I had no
trunks with me. I had to leave behind a spare pair
of shoes in the hotel to make room in my little bag for
that snuff. And fancy! That old priest absolutely
pushed the parcel away. I could have thrown it at his
head; but I thought suddenly of that hard, prayerful
life, knowing nothing of any ease or pleasure in the
world, absolutely nothing but a pinch of snuff now and
then. I remembered how wretched be used to be when
he lacked a copper or two to get some snuff with. My
face was hot with indignation, but before I could fly out
at him I remembered how simple he was. So I said with
great dignity that as the present came from the King
and as he wouldn't receive it from my hand there was
nothing else for me to do but to throw it into the brook;
and I made as if I were going to do it, too. He shouted:
`Stay, unhappy girl! Is it really from His Majesty,
whom God preserve?' I said contemptuously, `Of
course.' He looked at me with great pity in his eyes,
sighed deeply, and took the little tin from my hand. I
suppose he imagined me in my abandoned way wheedling
the necessary cash out of the King for the purchase of
that snuff. You can't imagine how simple he is. Nothing
was easier than to deceive him; but don't imagine I
deceived him from the vainglory of a mere sinner. I
lied to the dear man, simply because I couldn't bear the
idea of him being deprived of the only gratification his
big, ascetic, gaunt body ever knew on earth. As I
mounted my mule to go away he murmured coldly:
`God guard you, Se<n~>ora!' Se<n~>ora! What sternness!
We were off a little way already when his heart softened
and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: `The road
to Heaven is repentance!' And then, after a silence,
again the great shout `Repentance!' thundered after me,
Was that sternness or simplicity, I wonder? Or a mere
unmeaning superstition, a mechanical thing? If there
lives anybody completely honest in this world, surely it
must be my uncle. And yet---who knows?

  ``Would you guess what was the next thing I did?
Directly I got over the frontier I wrote from Bayonne
asking the old man to send me out my sister here. I
said it was for the service of the King. You see, I had
thought suddenly of that house of mine in which you
once spent the night talking with Mr. Mills and Don
Juan Blunt. I thought it would do extremely well for
Carlist officers coming this way on leave or on a mission. 
In hotels they might have been molested, but I knew
that I could get protection for my house. Just a word
from the ministry in Paris to the Prefect. But I wanted
a woman to manage it for me. And where was I to find
a trustworthy woman? How was I to know one when
I saw her? I don't know how to talk to women. Of
course my Rose would have done for me that or anything
else; but what could I have done myself without
her? She has looked after me from the first. It was
Henry All<e`>gre who got her for me eight years ago. I
don't know whether he meant it for a kindness but she's
the only human being on whom I can lean. She knows
. . . What doesn't she know about me! She has
never failed to do the right thing for me unasked. I
couldn't part with her. And I couldn't think of anybody
else but my sister.

  ``After all it was somebody belonging to me. But it
seemed the wildest idea. Yet she came at once. Of
course I took care to send her some money. She likes
money. As to my uncle there is nothing that he wouldn't
have given up for the service of the King. Rose went
to meet her at the railway station. She told me afterwards
that there had been no need for me to be anxious
about her recognizing Mademoiselle Therese. There was
nobody else in the train that could be mistaken for her. 
I should think not! She had made for herself a dress of
some brown stuff like a nun's habit and had a crooked
stick and carried all her belongings tied up in a handkerchief.
She looked like a pilgrim to a saint's shrine, Rose
took her to the house. She asked when she saw it: `And
does this big place really belong to our Rita?' My maid
of course said that it was mine. `And how long did our
Rita live here?'---`Madame has never seen it unless
perhaps the outside, as far as I know. I believe Mr.
All<e`>gre lived here for some time when he was a young
man.'---`The sinner that's dead?'---`Just so,' says Rose. 
You know nothing ever startles Rose. `Well, his sins
are gone with him,' said my sister, and began to make
herself at home.

  ``Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on
the third day she was back with me with the remark that
Mlle. Therese knew her way about very well already and
preferred to be left to herself. Some little time afterwards
I went to see that sister of mine. The first thing
she said to me, `I wouldn't have recognized you, Rita,'
and I said, `What a funny dress you have, Therese, more
fit for the portress of a convent than for this house.'---
`Yes,' she said, `and unless you give this house to me,
Rita, I will go back to our country. I will have nothing
to do with your life, Rita. Your life is no secret for me.'

  ``I was going from room to room and Therese was
following me. `I don't know that my life is a secret to
anybody,' I said to her, `but how do you know anything
about it?' And then she told me that it was through a
cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know. He
had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish
commercial house of some kind, in Paris, and apparently
had made it his business to write home whatever he could
hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine
with whom I lived as a girl. I got suddenly very furious. 
I raged up and down the room (we were alone upstairs),
and Therese scuttled away from me as far as the door. 
I heard her say to herself, `It's the evil spirit in her that
makes her like this.' She was absolutely convinced of
that. She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect
herself. I was quite astounded. And then I really
couldn't help myself. I burst into a laugh. I laughed and
laughed; I really couldn't stop till Therese ran away. I
went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall
with her face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling
in a corner. I had to pull her out by the shoulders from
there. I don't think she was frightened; she was only
shocked. But I don't suppose her heart is desperately
bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very
tired she came and knelt in front of me and put her arms
round my waist and entreated me to cast off from me my
evil ways with the help of saints and priests. Quite a
little programme for a reformed sinner. I got away at
last. I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair
looking after me. `I pray for you every night and
morning, Rita,' she said.---`Oh, yes. I know you are
a good sister,' I said to her. I was letting myself out
when she called after me, `And what about this house,
Rita? ' I said to her, `Oh, you may keep it till the day
I reform and enter a convent.' The last I saw of her
she was still on her knees looking after me with her mouth
open. I have seen her since several times, but our intercourse
is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with
some great lady. But I believe she really knows how to
make men comfortable. Upon my word I think she likes
to look after men. They don't seem to be such great
sinners as women are. I think you could do worse than
take up your quarters at number 10. She will no doubt
develop a saintly sort of affection for you, too.''

  I don't know that the prospect of becoming a favourite
of Do<n~>a Rita's peasant sister was very fascinating to me. 
If I went to live very willingly at No. 10 it was because
everything connected with Do<n~>a Rita had for me a
peculiar fascination, She had only passed through the
house once as far as l knew; but it was enough. She was
one of those beings that leave a trace. I am not unreasonable---
I mean for those that knew her. That is, I suppose,
because she was so unforgettable. Let us remember
the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier
with a criminal soul (or shall we say heart) and facile
tears. No wonder, then, that for me, who may flatter
myself without undue vanity with being much finer than
that grotesque international intriguer, the mere knowledge
that Do<n~>a Rita had passed through the very rooms
in which I was going to live between the strenuous times
of the sea-expeditions, was enough to fill my inner being
with a great content. Her glance, her darkly brilliant
blue glance, had run over the walls of that room which
most likely would be mine to slumber in. Behind me,
somewhere near the door, Therese, the peasant sister,
said in a funnily compassionate tone and in an amazingly
landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false persuasiveness:

  ``You will be very comfortable here, Se<n~>or. It is so
peaceful here in the street. Sometimes one may think
oneself in a village. It's only a hundred and twenty-five
francs for the friends of the King. And I shall take such
good care of you that your very heart will be able to rest.''


			II

  Do<n~>a Rita was curious to know how I got on with her
peasant sister and all I could say in, return for that inquiry
was that the peasant sister was in her own way amiable. 
At this she clicked her tongue amusingly and repeated a
remark she had made before: ``She likes young men. 
The younger the better.'' The mere thought of those two
women being sisters aroused one's wonder. Physically
they were altogether of different design. It was also the
difference between living tissue of glowing loveliness with
a divine breath, and a hard hollow figure of baked clay.

  Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement,
wonderful enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware. 
The only gleam perhaps that one could find on her was
that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull
lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably,
because it was never associated with a smile. She smiled
with compressed mouth. It was indeed difficult to conceive
of those two birds coming from the same nest. And
yet . . . Contrary to what generally happens, it was
when one saw those two women together that one lost
all belief in the possibility of their relationship near or
far. It extended even to their common humanity. One,
as it were, doubted it. If one of the two was representative,
then the other was either something more or less
than human. One wondered whether these two women
belonged to the same scheme of creation. One was
secretly amazed to see them standing together, speaking
to each other, having words in common, understanding
each other. And yet! . . . Our psychological sense
is the crudest of all; we don't know, we don't perceive
how superficial we are. The simplest shades escape us,
the secret of changes, of relations. No, upon the whole,
the only feature (and yet with enormous differences)
which Therese had in common with her sister, as I told
Do<n~>a Rita, was amiability.

  ``For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself,''
I went on. ``It's one of your characteristics, of
course much more precious than in other people. You
transmute the commonest traits into gold of your
own; but after all there are no new names. You are
amiable. You were most amiable to me when I first
saw you.''

  ``Really. I was not aware. Not specially. . . .''

  ``I had never the presumption to think that it was
special. Moreover, my head was in a whirl. I was lost
in astonishment first of all at what I had been listening to
all night. Your history, you know, a wonderful tale with
a flavour of wine in it and wreathed in clouds, with that
amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy of a woman lurking
in a corner, and with Blunt's smile gleaming through
a fog, the fog in my eyes, from Mills' pipe, you know. 
I was feeling quite inanimate as to body and frightfully
stimulated as to mind all the time. I had never heard
anything like that talk about you before. Of course I
wasn't sleepy, but still I am not used to do altogether
without sleep like Blunt . . .''

  ``Kept awake all night listening to my story!'' She
marvelled.

  ``Yes. You don't think I am complaining, do you?
I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Blunt in a
ragged old jacket and a white tie and that incisive polite
voice of his seemed strange and weird. It seemed as
though he were inventing it all rather angrily. I had
doubts as to your existence.''

  ``Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story.''

  ``Anybody would be,'' I said. ``I was. I didn't sleep
a wink. I was expecting to see you soon---and even
then I had my doubts.''

  ``As to my existence?''

  ``It wasn't exactly that, though of course I couldn't
tell that you weren't a product of Captain Blunt's sleeplessness.
He seemed to dread exceedingly to be left alone
and your story might have been a device to detain
us . . .''

  ``He hasn't enough imagination for that,'' she said.

  ``It didn't occur to me. But there was Mills, who
apparently believed in your existence. I could trust
Mills. My doubts were about the propriety. I couldn't
see any good reason for being taken to see you. Strange
that it should be my connection with the sea which brought
me here to the Villa.''

  ``Unexpected perhaps.''

  ``No. I mean particularly strange and significant.''

  ``Why?''

  ``Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and
each other) that the sea is my only love. They were
always chaffing me because they couldn't see or guess in
my life at any woman, open or secret. . .''

  ``And is that really so?'' she inquired negligently.

  ``Why, yes. I don't mean to say that I am like an innocent
shepherd in one of those interminable stories of the
eighteenth century. But I don't throw the word love
about indiscriminately. It may be all true about the
sea; but some people would say that they love sausages.''

  ``You are horrible.''

  ``I am surprised.''

  ``I mean your choice of words.''

  ``And you have never uttered a word yet that didn't
change into a pearl as it dropped from your lips. At
least not before me.''

  She glanced down deliberately and said, ``This is better.
But I don't see any of them on the floor.''

  ``It's you who are horrible in the implications of your
language. Don't see any on the floor! Haven't I caught
up and treasured them all in my heart? I am not the
animal from which sausages are made.''

  She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest
possible smile breathed out the word: ``No.''

  And we both laughed very loud. O! days of innocence!
On this occasion we parted from each other on a
light-hearted note. But already I had acquired the conviction
that there was nothing more lovable in the world
than that woman; nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and
illuminating than the emanation of her charm. I meant
it absolutely---not excepting the light of the sun.

  From this there was only one step further to take. 
The step into a conscious surrender; the open perception
that this charm, warming like a flame, was also all-revealing
like a great light; giving new depth to shades,
new brilliance to colours, an amazing vividness to all
sensations and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that
had been lived before seemed to have been lived in a
drab world and with a languid pulse.

  A great revelation this. I don't mean to say it was
soul-shaking. The soul was already a captive before
doubt, anguish, or dismay could touch its surrender and
its exaltation. But all the same the revelation turned
many things into dust; and, amongst others, the sense of
the careless freedom of my life. If that life ever had any
purpose or any aim outside itself I would have said that
it threw a shadow across its path. But it hadn't. There
had been no path. But there was a shadow, the inseparable
companion of all light. No illumination can sweep
all mystery out of the world. After the departed darkness
the shadows remain, more mysterious because as if
more enduring; and one feels a dread of them from which
one was free before. What if they were to be victorious
at the last? They, or what perhaps lurks in them: fear,
deception, desire, disillusion---all silent at first before
the song of triumphant love vibrating in the light. 
Yes. Silent. Even desire itself! All silent. But not
for long!

  This was, I think, before the third expedition. Yes, it
must have been the third, for I remember that it was
boldly planned and that it was carried out without a
hitch. The tentative period was over; all our arrangements
had been perfected. There was, so to speak,
always an unfailing smoke on the hill and an unfailing
lantern on the shore. Our friends, mostly bought for hard
cash and therefore valuable, had acquired confidence in
us. This, they seemed to say, is no unfathomable roguery
of penniless adventurers. This is but the reckless enterprise
of men of wealth and sense and needn't be inquired
into. The young _caballero_ has got real gold pieces in the
belt he wears next his skin; and the man with the heavy
moustaches and unbelieving eyes is indeed very much of
a man. They gave to Dominic all their respect and to
me a great show of deference; for I had all the money,
while they thought that Dominic had all the sense. That
judgment was not exactly correct. I had my share of
judgment and audacity which surprises me now that the
years have chilled the blood without dimming the memory.
I remember going about the business with a light-hearted,
clear-headed recklessness which, according as its
decisions were sudden or considered, made Dominic
draw his breath through his clenched teeth, or look hard
at me before he gave me either a slight nod of assent or
a sarcastic ``Oh, certainly''---just as the humour of the
moment prompted him.

  One night as we were lying on a bit of dry sand under
the lee of a rock, side by side, watching the light of our
little vessel dancing away at sea in the windy distance,
Dominic spoke suddenly to me.

  ``I suppose Alphonso and Carlos, Carlos and Alphonso,
they are nothing to you, together or separately?''

  I said: ``Dominic, if they were both to vanish from
the earth together or separately it would make no difference
to my feelings.''

  He remarked: ``Just so. A man mourns only for his
friends. I suppose they are no more friends to you than
they are to me. Those Carlists make a great consumption
of cartridges. That is well. But why should we do
all those mad things that you will insist on us doing till
my hair,'' he pursued with grave, mocking exaggeration,
``till my hair tries to stand up on my head? and all for
that Carlos, let God and the devil each guard his own,
for that Majesty as they call him, but after all a man
like another and---no friend.''

  ``Yes, why?'' I murmured, feeling my body nestled at
ease in the sand.

  It was very dark under the overhanging rock on that
night of clouds and of wind that died and rose and died
again. Dominic's voice was heard speaking low between
the short gusts.

  ``Friend of the Se<n~>ora, eh?''

  ``That's what the world says, Dominic.''

  ``Half of what the world says are lies,'' he pronounced
dogmatically. ``For all his majesty he may be a good
enough man. Yet he is only a king in the mountains
and to-morrow he may be no more than you. Still a
woman like that---one, somehow, would grudge her to a
better king. She ought to be set up on a high pillar for
people that walk on the ground to raise their eyes up
to. But you are otherwise, you gentlemen. You, for
instance, Monsieur, you wouldn't want to see her set up
on a pillar.''

  ``That sort of thing, Dominic,'' I said, ``that sort of
thing, you understand me, ought to be done early.''

  He was silent for a time. And then his manly voice
was heard in the shadow of the rock.

  ``I see well enough what you mean. I spoke of the
multitude, that only raise their eyes. But for kings and
suchlike that is not enough. Well, no heart need despair;
for there is not a woman that wouldn't at some
time or other get down from her pillar for no bigger
bribe perhaps than just a flower which is fresh to-day
and withered to-morrow. And then, what's the good of
asking how long any woman has been up there? There
is a true saying that lips that have been kissed do not
lose their freshness.''

  I don't know what answer I could have made. I
imagine Dominic thought himself unanswerable. As a
matter of fact, before I could speak, a voice came to us
down the face of the rock crying secretly, ``Ol<a`>, down
there! All is safe ashore.''

  It was the boy who used to hang about the stable of a
muleteer's inn in a little shallow valley with a shallow
little stream in it, and where we had been hiding most
of the day before coining down to the shore. We both
started to our feet and Dominic said, ``A good boy that. 
You didn't hear him either come or go above our heads. 
Don't reward him with more than one peseta, Se<n~>or,
whatever he does. If you were to give him two he would
go mad at the sight of so much wealth and throw up his
job at the Fonda, where he is so useful to run errands, in
that way he has of skimming along the paths without
displacing a stone.''

  Meantime he was busying himself with striking a fire
to set alight a small heap of dry sticks he had made
ready beforehand on that spot which in all the circuit
of the Bay was perfectly screened from observation from
the land side.

  The clear flame shooting up revealed him in the black
cloak with a hood of a Mediterranean sailor. His eyes
watched the dancing dim light to seaward. And he
talked the while.

  ``The only fault you have, Se<n~>or, is being too generous
with your money. In this world you must give
sparingly. The only things you may deal out without
counting, in this life of ours which is but a little fight
and a little love, is blows to your enemy and kisses to a
woman. . . . Ah! here they are coming in.''

  I noticed the dancing light in the dark west much
closer to the shore now. Its motion had altered. It
swayed slowly as it ran towards us, and, suddenly, the
darker shadow as of a great pointed wing appeared
gliding in the night. Under it a human voice shouted
something confidently.

  ``_Bueno,_'' muttered Dominic. From some receptacle I
didn't see he poured a lot of water on the blaze, like a
magician at the end of a successful incantation that had
called out a shadow and a voice from the immense space
of the sea. And his hooded figure vanished from my
sight in a great hiss and the warm feel of ascending
steam.

  ``That's all over,'' he said, ``and now we go back for
more work, more toil, more trouble, more exertion with
hands and feet, for hours and hours. And all the time
the head turned over the shoulder, too.''

  We were climbing a precipitous path sufficiently dangerous
in the dark, Dominic, more familiar with it, going
first and I scrambling close behind in order that I might
grab at his cloak if I chanced to slip or miss my footing. 
I remonstrated against this arrangement as we stopped
to rest. I had no doubt I would grab at his cloak if I
felt myself falling. I couldn't help doing that. But I
would probably only drag him down with me.

  With one hand grasping a shadowy bush above his
head he growled that all this was possible, but that it
was all in the bargain, and urged me onwards.

  When we got on to the level that man whose even
breathing no exertion, no danger, no fear or anger could
disturb, remarked as we strode side by side:

  ``I will say this for us, that we are carrying out all this
deadly foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes
of the Se<n~>ora were on us all the time. And as to risk, I
suppose we take more than she would approve of, I
fancy, if she ever gave a moment's thought to us out
here. Now, for instance, in the next half hour, we may
come any moment on three carabineers who would let
off their pieces without asking questions. Even your
way of flinging money about cannot make safety for men
set on defying a whole big country for the sake of---
what is it exactly?---the blue eyes, or the white arms of
the Se<n~>ora.''

  He kept his voice equably low. It was a lonely spot
and but for a vague shape of a dwarf tree here and there
we had only the flying clouds for company. Very far off
a tiny light twinkled a little way up the seaward shoulder
of an invisible mountain. Dominic moved on.

  ``Fancy yourself lying here, on this wild spot, with a
leg smashed by a shot or perhaps with a bullet in your
side. It might happen. A star might fall. I have
watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in the
Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of
gunpowder in your face may be a bigger matter. Yet
somehow it's pleasant as we stumble in the dark to think
of our Se<n~>ora in that long room with a shiny floor and all
that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you
call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. 
And very still . . .''

  He remembered her---whose image could not be dismissed.

  I laid my hand on his shoulder.

  ``That light on the mountain side flickers exceedingly,
Dominic. Are we in the path?''

  He addressed me then in French, which was between us
the language of more formal moments.

  ``_Prenez mon bras, monsieur._ Take a firm hold, or I
will have you stumbling again and falling into one of
those beastly holes, with a good chance to crack your
head. And there is no need to take offence. For, speaking
with all respect, why should you, and I with you, be
here on this lonely spot, barking our shins in the dark on
the way to a confounded flickering light where there will
be no other supper but a piece of a stale sausage and a
draught of leathery wine out of a stinking skin. Pah!''

  I had good hold of his arm. Suddenly he dropped the
formal French and pronounced in his inflexible voice:

  ``For a pair of white arms, Se<n~>or. _Bueno._''

  He could understand.


			III

  On our return from that expedition we came gliding into
the old harbour so late that Dominic and I, making for
the caf<e'> kept by Madame L<e'>onore, found it empty of customers,
except for two rather sinister fellows playing cards
together at a corner table near the door. The first thing
done by Madame L<e'>onore was to put her hands on Dominic's
shoulders and look at arm's length into the eyes of
that man of audacious deeds and wild stratagems who
smiled straight at her from under his heavy and, at that
time, uncurled moustaches.

  Indeed we didn't present a neat appearance, our faces
unshaven, with the traces of dried salt sprays on our
smarting skins and the sleeplessness of full forty hours
filming our eyes. At least it was so with me who saw as
through a mist Madame L<e'>onore moving with her mature
nonchalant grace, setting before us wine and glasses with
a faint swish of her ample black skirt. Under the elaborate
structure of black hair her jet-black eyes sparkled
like good-humoured stars and even I could see that she
was tremendously excited at having this lawless wanderer
Dominic within her reach and as it were in her power. 
Presently she sat down by us, touched lightly Dominic's
curly head silvered on the temples (she couldn't really
help it), gazed at me for a while with a quizzical smile,
observed that I looked very tired, and asked Dominic
whether for all that I was likely to sleep soundly to-night.

  ``I don't know,'' said Dominic. ``He's young. And
there is always the chance of dreams.''

  ``What do you men dream of in those little barques of
yours tossing for months on the water?''

  ``Mostly of nothing,'' said Dominic. ``But it has
happened to me to dream of furious fights.''

  ``And of furious loves, too, no doubt,'' she caught him
up in a mocking voice.

  ``No, that's for the waking hours,'' Dominic drawled,
basking sleepily with his head between his hands in her
ardent gaze. ``The waking hours are longer.''

  ``They must be, at sea,'' she said, never taking her eyes
off him. ``But I suppose you do talk of your loves
sometimes.''

  ``You may be sure, Madame L<e'>onore,'' I interjected,
noticing the hoarseness of my voice, ``that you at any
rate are talked about a lot at sea.''

  ``I am not so sure of that now. There is that strange
lady from the Prado that you took him to see, Signorino. 
She went to his head like a glass of wine into a tender
youngster's. He is such a child, and I suppose that I am
another. Shame to confess it, the other morning I got a
friend to look after the caf<e'> for a couple of hours, wrapped
up my head, and walked out there to the other end of the
town. . . . Look at these two sitting up! And I
thought they were so sleepy and tired, the poor fellows!''

  She kept our curiosity in suspense for a moment.

  ``Well, I have seen your marvel, Dominic,'' she continued
in a calm voice. ``She came flying out of the gate
on horseback and it would have been all I would have seen
of her if---and this is for you, Signorino---if she hadn't
pulled up in the main alley to wait for a very good-looking
cavalier. He had his moustaches so, and his
teeth were very white when he smiled at her. But his
eyes are too deep in his head for my taste. I didn't like
it. It reminded me of a certain very severe priest who
used to come to our village when I was young; younger
even than your marvel, Dominic.''

  ``It was no priest in disguise, Madame L<e'>onore,'' I
said, amused by her expression of disgust. ``That's an
American.''

  ``Ah! _Un Americano!_ Well, never mind him. It was
her that I went to see.''

  ``What! Walked to the other end of the town to see
Do<n~>a Rita!'' Dominic addressed her in a low bantering
tone. ``Why, you were always telling me you couldn't
walk further than the end of the quay to save your life---
or even mine, you said.''

  ``Well, I did; and I walked back again and between the
two walks I had a good look. And you may be sure---that
will surprise you both---that on the way back---oh, Santa
Madre, wasn't it a long way, too---I wasn't thinking of
any man at sea or on shore in that connection.''

  ``No. And you were not thinking of yourself, either,
I suppose,'' I said. Speaking was a matter of great effort
for me, whether I was too tired or too sleepy, I can't tell. 
``No, you were not thinking of yourself. You were thinking
of a woman, though.''

  ``_Si._ As much a woman as any of us that ever breathed
in the world. Yes, of her! Of that very one! You see,
we woman are not like you men, indifferent to each other
unless by some exception. Men say we are always against
one another but that's only men's conceit. What can she
be to me? I am not afraid of the big child here,'' and she
tapped Dominic's forearm on which he rested his head
with a fascinated stare. ``With us two it is for life and
death, and I am rather pleased that there is something yet
in him that can catch fire on occasion. I would have
thought less of him if he hadn't been able to get out of
hand a little, for something really fine. As for you, Signorino,''
she turned on me with an unexpected and sarcastic
sally, ``I am not in love with you yet.'' She changed
her tone from sarcasm to a soft and even dreamy note.

  ``A head like a gem,'' went on that woman born in some
by-street of Rome, and a plaything for years of God
knows what obscure fates. ``Yes, Dominic! _Antica._ I
haven't been haunted by a face since---since I was sixteen
years old. It was the face of a young cavalier in the
street. He was on horseback, too. He never looked at
me, I never saw him again, and I loved him for---for
days and days and days. That was the sort of face he
had. And her face is of the same sort. She had a man's
hat, too, on her head. So high!''

  ``A man's hat on her head,'' remarked with profound
displeasure Dominic, to whom this wonder, at least,
of all the wonders of the earth, was apparently unknown.

  ``_Si._ And her face has haunted me. Not so long as
that other but more touchingly because I am no longer
sixteen and this is a woman. Yes, I did think of her. I
myself was once that age and I, too, had a face of my own
to show to the world, though not so superb. And I, too,
didn't know why I had come into the world any more than
she does.''

  ``And now you know,'' Dominic growled softly, with
his head still between his hands.

  She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but
in the end only sighed lightly.

  ``And what do you know of her, you who have seen her
so well as to be haunted by her face?'' I asked.

  I wouldn't have been surprised if she had answered me
with another sigh. For she seemed only to be thinking of
herself and looked not in my direction. But suddenly
she roused up.

  ``Of her?'' she repeated in a louder voice. ``Why should
I talk of another woman? And then she is a great
lady.''

  At this I could not repress a smile which she detected
at once.

  ``Isn't she? Well, no, perhaps she isn't; but you may
be sure of one thing, that she is both flesh and shadow
more than any one that I have seen. Keep that well in
your mind: She is for no man! She would be vanishing
out of their hands like water that cannot be held.''

  I caught my breath. ``Inconstant,'' I whispered.

  ``I don't say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full
of pity. Signorino, you don't know much about women. 
And you may learn something yet or you may not; but
what you learn from her you will never forget.''

  ``Not to be held,'' I murmured; and she whom the
quayside called Madame L<e'>onore closed her outstretched
hand before my face and opened it at once to show its
emptiness in illustration of her expressed opinion. Dominic
never moved.

  I wished good-night to these two and left the caf<e'> for
the fresh air and the dark spaciousness of the quays augmented
by all the width of the old Port where between
the trails of light the shadows of heavy hulls appeared
very black, merging their outlines in a great confusion. I
left behind me the end of the Cannebi<e`>re, a wide vista of
tall houses and much-lighted pavements losing itself in the
distance with an extinction of both shapes and lights. I
slunk past it with only a side glance and sought the dimness
of quiet streets away from the centre of the usual night
gaieties of the town. The dress I wore was just that of a
sailor come ashore from some coaster, a thick blue woollen
shirt or rather a sort of jumper with a knitted cap like a
tam-o'-shanter worn very much on one side and with a red
tuft of wool in the centre. This was even the reason why
I had lingered so long in the caf<e'>. I didn't want to be
recognized in the streets in that costume and still less to
be seen entering the house in the street of the Consuls. At
that hour when the performances were over and all the
sensible citizens in their beds I didn't hesitate to cross
the Place of the Opera. It was dark, the audience had
already dispersed. The rare passers-by I met hurrying
on their last affairs of the day paid no attention to me at
all. The street of the Consuls I expected to find empty,
as usual at that time of the night. But as I turned a
corner into it I overtook three people who must have
belonged to the locality. To me, somehow, they appeared
strange. Two girls in dark cloaks walked ahead
of a tall man in a top hat. I slowed down, not wishing
to pass them by, the more so that the door of the house
was only a few yards distant. But to my intense surprise
those people stopped at it and the man in the top
hat, producing a latchkey, let his two companions through,
followed them, and with a heavy slam cut himself off
from my astonished self and the rest of mankind.

  In the stupid way people have I stood and meditated
on the sight, before it occurred to me that this
was the most useless thing to do. After waiting a
little longer to let the others get away from the hall I
entered in my turn. The small gas-jet seemed not to
have been touched ever since that distant night when
Mills and I trod the black-and-white marble hall for the
first time on the heels of Captain Blunt---who lived by
his sword. And in the dimness and solitude which kept
no more trace of the three strangers than if they had
been the merest ghosts I seemed to hear the ghostly
murmur, ``_Am<e'>ricain, Catholique et gentilhomme. 
Am<e'>r . . ._'' Unseen by human eye I ran up the
flight of steps swiftly and on the first floor stepped into
my sitting-room of which the door was open . . . ``_et
gentilhomme._'' I tugged at the bell pull and somewhere
down below a bell rang as unexpected for Therese as a
call from a ghost.

  I had no notion whether Therese could hear me. I
seemed to remember that she slept in any bed that happened
to be vacant. For all I knew she might have been
asleep in mine. As I had no matches on me I waited for
a while in the dark. The house was perfectly still. Suddenly
without the slightest preliminary sound light fell
into the room and Therese stood in the open door with a
candlestick in her hand.

  She had on her peasant brown skirt, The rest of her
was concealed in a black shawl which covered her head,
her shoulders, arms, and elbows completely, down to her
waist. The hand holding the candle protruded from that
envelope which the other invisible hand clasped together
under her very chin. And her face looked like a face in
a painting. She said at once:

  ``You startled me, my young Monsieur.''

  She addressed me most frequently in that way as
though she liked the very word ``young.'' Her manner
was certainly peasant-like with a sort of plaint in the
voice, while the face was that of a serving Sister in some
small and rustic convent.

  ``I meant to do it,'' I said. ``I am a very bad
person.''

  ``The young are always full of fun,'' she said as if she
were gloating over the idea. ``It is very pleasant.''

  ``But you are very brave,'' I chaffed her, ``for you
didn't expect a ring, and after all it might have been the
devil who pulled the bell.''

  ``It might have been. But a poor girl like me is not
afraid of the devil. I have a pure heart. I have been to
confession last evening. No. But it might have been
an assassin that pulled the bell ready to kill a poor harmless
woman. This is a very lonely street. What could
prevent you to kill me now and then walk out again free
as air?''

  While she was talking like this she had lighted the gas
and with the last words she glided through the bedroom
door leaving me thunderstruck at the unexpected character
of her thoughts.

  I couldn't know that there had been during my absence
a case of atrocious murder which had affected the
imagination of the whole town; and though Therese did
not read the papers (which she imagined to be full of impieties
and immoralities invented by godless men) yet if
she spoke at all with her kind, which she must have done
at least in shops, she could not have helped hearing of it. 
It seems that for some days people could talk of nothing
else. She returned gliding from the bedroom hermetically
scaled in her black shawl just as she had gone in,
with the protruding hand holding the lighted candle and
relieved my perplexity as to her morbid turn of mind by
telling me something of the murder story in a strange
tone of indifference even while referring to its most horrible
features. ``That's what carnal sin (_p<e^>ch<e'> de chair_) leads
to,'' she commented severely and passed her tongue over
her thin lips. ``And then the devil furnishes the occasion.''

  ``I can't imagine the devil inciting me to murder you,
Therese,'' I said, ``and I didn't like that ready way you
took me for an example, as it were. I suppose pretty near
every lodger might be a potential murderer, but I expected
to be made an exception.''

  With the candle held a little below her face, with that
face of one tone and without relief she looked more than
ever as though she had come out of an old, cracked, smoky
painting, the subject of which was altogether beyond
human conception. And she only compressed her lips.

  ``All right,'' I said, making myself comfortable on a
sofa after pulling off my boots. ``I suppose any one is
liable to commit murder all of a sudden. Well, have you
got many murderers in the house? ''

  ``Yes,'' she said, ``it's pretty good. Upstairs and
downstairs,'' she sighed. ``God sees to it.''

  ``And by the by, who is that grey-headed murderer in
a tall hat whom I saw shepherding two girls into this
house?''

  She put on a candid air in which one could detect a
little of her peasant cunning.

  ``Oh, yes. They are two dancing girls at the Opera,
sisters, as different from each other as I and our poor Rita. 
But they are both virtuous and that gentleman, their
father, is very severe with them. Very severe indeed,
poor motherless things. And it seems to be such a sinful
occupation.''

  ``I bet you make them pay a big rent, Therese. With
an occupation like that . . .''

  She looked at me with eyes of invincible innocence and
began to glide towards the door, so smoothly that the
flame of the candle hardly swayed. ``Good-night,'' she
murmured.

  ``Good-night, Mademoiselle.''

  Then in the very doorway she turned right round as a
marionette would turn.

  ``Oh, you ought to know, my dear young Monsieur,
that Mr. Blunt, the dear handsome man, has arrived from
Navarre three days ago or more. Oh,'' she added with a
priceless air of compunction, ``he is such a charming
gentleman.''

  And the door shut after her.


			IV

  That night I passed in a state, mostly open-eyed, I believe,
but always on the border between dreams and waking. 
The only thing absolutely absent from it was the feeling
of rest. The usual sufferings of a youth in love had
nothing to do with it. I could leave her, go away from her,
remain away from her, without an added pang or any
augmented consciousness of that torturing sentiment of
distance so acute that often it ends by wearing itself out
in a few days. Far or near was all one to me, as if one
could never get any further but also never any nearer
to her secret: the state like that of some strange wild
faiths that get hold of mankind with the cruel mystic grip
of unattainable perfection, robbing them of both liberty
and felicity on earth. A faith presents one with some
hope, though. But I had no hope, and not even desire
as a thing outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust
or excite. It was in me just like life was in me; that
life of which a popular saying affirms that ``it is sweet.''
For the general wisdom of mankind will always stop short
on the limit of the formidable.

  What is best in a state of brimful, equable suffering is
that it does away with the gnawings of petty sensations. 
Too far gone to be sensible to hope and desire I was spared
the inferior pangs of elation and impatience. Hours
with her or hours without her were all alike, all in her
possession! But still there are shades and I will admit
that the hours of that morning were perhaps a little
more difficult to get through than the others. I had sent
word of my arrival of course. I had written a note. I
had rung the bell. Therese had appeared herself in her
brown garb and as monachal as ever. I had said to her:
``Have this sent off at once.''

  She had gazed at the addressed envelope, smiled (I
was looking up at her from my desk), and at last took it
up with an effort of sanctimonious repugnance. But she
remained with it in her hand looking at me as though she
were piously gloating over something she could read in
my face.

  ``Oh, that Rita, that Rita,'' she murmured. ``And
you, too! Why are you trying, you, too, like the others,
to stand between her and the mercy of God? What's the
good of all this to you? And you such a nice, dear,
young gentleman. For no earthly good only making all
the kind saints in heaven angry, and our mother ashamed
in her place amongst the blessed.''

  ``Mademoiselle Therese,'' I said, ``_vous <e^>tes folle._''

  I believed she was crazy. She was cunning, too. I
added an imperious: ``_Allez,_'' and with a strange docility
she glided out without another word. All I had to do
then was to get dressed and wait till eleven o'clock.
The hour struck at last. If I could have plunged into a
light wave and been transported instantaneously to Do<n~>a
Rita's door it would no doubt have saved me an infinity
of pangs too complex for analysis; but as this was impossible
I elected to walk from end to end of that long way.
My emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic
inasmuch that they were very intense and primitive, and
that I lay very helpless in their unrelaxing grasp. If one
could have kept a record of one's physical sensations it
would have been a fine collection of absurdities and contradictions.
Hardly touching the ground and yet leaden-footed;
with a sinking heart and an excited brain; hot
and trembling with a secret faintness, and yet as firm
as a rock and with a sort of indifference to it all, I did
reach the door which was frightfully like any other commonplace
door, but at the same time had a fateful character:
a few planks put together---and an awful symbol;
not to be approached without awe---and yet coming open
in the ordinary way to the ring of the bell.

  It came open. Oh, yes, very much as usual, But in
the ordinary course of events the first sight in the hall
should have been the back of the ubiquitous, busy, silent
maid hurrying off and already distant. But not at all!
She actually waited for me to enter. I was extremely
taken aback and I believe spoke to her for the first time
in my life.

  ``_Bonjour,_ Rose.''

  She dropped her dark eyelids over those eyes that ought
to have been lustrous but were not, as if somebody had
breathed on them the first thing in the morning. She was
a girl without smiles. She shut the door after me, and
not only did that but in the incredible idleness of that
morning she, who had never a moment to spare, started
helping me off with my overcoat. It was positively
embarrassing from its novelty. While busying herself
with those trifles she murmured without any marked
intention:

  ``Captain Blunt is with Madame.''

  This didn't exactly surprise me. I knew he had come
up to town; I only happened to have forgotten his existence
for the moment. I looked at the girl also without
any particular intention. But she arrested my movement
towards the dining-room door by a low, hurried, if
perfectly unemotional appeal:

  ``Monsieur George!''

  That of course was not my name. It served me then
as it will serve for this story. In all sorts of strange
places I was alluded to as ``that young gentleman they
call Monsieur George.'' Orders came from ``Monsieur
George'' to men who nodded knowingly. Events pivoted
about ``Monsieur George.'' I haven't the slightest doubt
that in the dark and tortuous streets of the old Town
there were fingers pointed at my back: there goes ``Monsieur
George.'' I had been introduced discreetly to several
considerable persons as ``Monsieur George.'' I had learned
to answer to the name quite naturally; and to simplify
matters I was also ``Monsieur George'' in the street of the
Consuls and in the Villa on the Prado. I verily believe
that at that time I had the feeling that the name of George
really belonged to me. I waited for what the girl had to
say. I had to wait some time, though during that silence
she gave no sign of distress or agitation. It was for her
obviously a moment of reflection. Her lips were compressed
a little in a characteristic, capable manner. I
looked at her with a friendliness I really felt towards her
slight, unattractive, and dependable person.

  ``Well,'' I said at last, rather amused by this mental
hesitation. I never took it for anything else. I was sure
it was not distrust. She appreciated men and things and
events solely in relation to Do<n~>a Rita's welfare and safety. 
And as to that I believed myself above suspicion. At
last she spoke.

  ``Madame is not happy.'' This information was given
to me not emotionally but as it were officially. It hadn't
even a tone of warning. A mere statement. Without
waiting to see the effect she opened the dining-room
door, not to announce my name in the usual way but to
go in and shut it behind her. In that short moment I
heard no voices inside. Not a sound reached me while
the door remained shut; but in a few seconds it came open
again and Rose stood aside to let me pass.

  Then I heard something: Do<n~>a Rita's voice raised a
little on an impatient note (a very, very rare thing)
finishing some phrase of protest with the words:
  
  ``. . . Of no consequence.''

  I heard them as I would have heard any other words,
for she had that kind of voice which carries a long distance.
But the maid's statement occupied all my mind.
``Madame _n'est pas heureuse._'' It had a dreadful precision
. . . ``Not happy . . .'' This unhappiness had
almost a concrete form---something resembling a horrid
bat. I was tired, excited, and generally overwrought. 
My head felt empty. What were the appearances of unhappiness?
I was still naive enough to associate them
with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes of the
body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful
to behold. I didn't know what I should see; but in
what I did see there was nothing startling, at any rate
from that nursery point of view which apparently I had
not yet outgrown.

  With immense relief the apprehensive child within me
beheld Captain Blunt warming his back at the more
distant of the two fireplaces; and as to Do<n~>a Rita there
was nothing extraordinary in her attitude either, except
perhaps that her hair was all loose about her shoulders. 
I hadn't the slightest doubt they had been riding together
that morning, but she, with her impatience of all
costume (and yet she could dress herself admirably and
wore her dresses triumphantly), had divested herself of her
riding habit and sat cross-legged enfolded in that ample
blue robe like a young savage chieftain in a blanket. It
covered her very feet. And before the normal fixity of
her enigmatical eyes the smoke of the cigarette ascended
ceremonially, straight up, in a slender spiral.

  ``How are you,'' was the greeting of Captain Blunt
with the usual smile which would have been more amiable
if his teeth hadn't been, just then, clenched quite so tight.
How he managed to force his voice through that shining
barrier I could never understand. Do<n~>a Rita tapped
the couch engagingly by her side but I sat down instead in
the armchair nearly opposite her, which, I imagine, must
have been just vacated by Blunt. She inquired with that
particular gleam of the eyes in which there was something
immemorial and gay:

  ``Well?''

  ``Perfect success.''

  ``I could hug you.''

  At any time her lips moved very little but in this instance
the intense whisper of these words seemed to form itself
right in my very heart; not as a conveyed sound but as
an imparted emotion vibrating there with an awful intimacy
of delight. And yet it left my heart heavy.

  ``Oh, yes, for joy,'' I said bitterly but very low; ``for
your Royalist, Legitimist, joy.'' Then with that trick of
very precise politeness which I must have caught from
Mr. Blunt I added:

  ``I don't want to be embraced---for the King.''

  And I might have stopped there. But I didn't. With
a perversity which should be forgiven to those who suffer
night and day and are as if drunk with an exalted unhappiness,
I went on: ``For the sake of an old cast-off glove;
for I suppose a disdained love is not much more than a
soiled, flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish
heap because it has missed the fire.''

  She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed
eyes, closed lips, slightly flushed face, as if carved six
thousand years ago in order to fix for ever that something
secret and obscure which is in all women. Not the gross
immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the
finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated
at the very source of the passions that have moved men
from the dawn of ages.

  Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece,
had turned away a little from us and his attitude expressed
excellently the detachment of a man who does not
want to hear. As a matter of fact, I don't suppose he
could have heard. He was too far away, our voices were
too contained. Moreover, he didn't want to hear. There
could be no doubt about it; but she addressed him unexpectedly.

  ``As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest
difficulty in getting myself, I won't say understood, but
simply believed.''

  No pose of detachment could avail against the warm
waves of that voice. He had to hear. After a moment
he altered his position as it were reluctantly, to answer
her.

  ``That's a difficulty that women generally have.''

  ``Yet I have always spoken the truth.''

  ``All women speak the truth,'' said Blunt imperturbably.
And this annoyed her.

  ``Where are the men I have deceived?'' she cried.

  ``Yes, where?'' said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as
though he had been ready to go out and look for them
outside.

  ``No! But show me one. I say---where is he?''

  He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds,
moved his shoulders slightly, very slightly, made a step
nearer to the couch, and looked down on her with an
expression of amused courtesy.

  ``Oh, I don't know. Probably nowhere. But if
such a man could be found I am certain he would
turn out a very stupid person. You can't be expected
to furnish every one who approaches you with a mind. 
To expect that would be too much, even from you
who know how to work wonders at such little cost to
yourself.''

  ``To myself,'' she repeated in a loud tone.

  ``Why this indignation? I am simply taking your
word for it.''

  ``Such little cost!'' she exclaimed under her breath.

  ``I mean to your person.''

  ``Oh, yes,'' she murmured, glanced down, as it were
upon herself, then added very low: ``This body.''

  ``Well, it is you,'' said Blunt with visibly contained
irritation. ``You don't pretend it's somebody else's. 
It can't be. You haven't borrowed it. . . . It fits you
too well,'' he ended between his teeth.

  ``You take pleasure in tormenting yourself,'' she remonstrated,
suddenly placated: ``and I would be sorry for
you if I didn't think it's the mere revolt of your pride. 
And you know you are indulging your pride at my expense. 
As to the rest of it, as to my living, acting, working
wonders at a little cost. . . . it has all but killed me
morally. Do you hear? Killed.''

  ``Oh, you are not dead yet,'' he muttered.

  ``No,'' she said with gentle patience. ``There is still
some feeling left in me; and if it is any satisfaction to you
to know it, you may be certain that I shall be conscious
of the last stab.''

  He remained silent for a while and then with a polite
smile and a movement of the head in my direction he
warned her.

  ``Our audience will get bored.''

  ``I am perfectly aware that Monsieur George is here,
and that he has been breathing a very different atmosphere
from what he gets in this room. Don't you find
this room extremely confined?'' she asked me.

  The room was very large but it is a fact that I felt
oppressed at that moment. This mysterious quarrel
between those two people, revealing something more close
in their intercourse than I had ever before suspected,
made me so profoundly unhappy that I didn't even
attempt to answer. And she continued:

  ``More space. More air. Give me air, air.'' She
seized the embroidered edges of her blue robe under her
white throat and made as if to tear them apart, to fling
it open on her breast, recklessly, before our eyes. We
both remained perfectly still. Her hands dropped nervelessly
by her side. ``I envy you, Monsieur George. If
I am to go under I should prefer to be drowned in the
sea with the wind on my face. What luck, to feel nothing
less than all the world closing over one's head!''

  A short silence ensued before Mr. Blunt's drawing-room
voice was heard with playful familiarity.

  ``I have often asked myself whether you weren't really
a very ambitious person, Do<n~>a Rita.''

  ``And I ask myself whether you have any heart.'' She
was looking straight at him and he gratified her with the
usual cold white flash of his even teeth before he answered.

  ``Asking yourself? That means that you are really
asking me. But why do it so publicly? I mean it. One
single, detached presence is enough to make a public. 
One alone. Why not wait till he returns to those regions
of space and air---from which he came.''

  His particular trick of speaking of any third person as
of a lay figure was exasperating. Yet at the moment I
did not know how to resent it, but, in any case, Do<n~>a
Rita would not have given me time. Without a moment's
hesitation she cried out:

  ``I only wish he could take me out there with him.''

  For a moment Mr. Blunt's face became as still as a
mask and then instead of an angry it assumed an indulgent
expression. As to me I had a rapid vision of Dominic's
astonishment, awe, and sarcasm which was always as
tolerant as it is possible for sarcasm to be. But what
a charming, gentle, gay, and fearless companion she would
have made! I believed in her fearlessness in any adventure
that would interest her. It would be a new occasion
for me, a new viewpoint for that faculty of admiration
he had awakened in me at sight---at first sight---before
she opened her lips---before she ever turned her eyes on
me. She would have to wear some sort of sailor costume,
a blue woollen shirt open at the throat. . . . Dominic's
hooded cloak would envelop her amply, and her face under
the black hood would have a luminous quality, adolescent
charm, and an enigmatic expression. The confined space
of the little vessel's quarterdeck would lend itself to her
cross-legged attitudes, and the blue sea would balance
gently her characteristic unmobility that seemed to hide
thoughts as old and profound as itself. As restless, too---
perhaps.

  But the picture I had in my eye. coloured and simple
like an illustration to a nursery-book tale of two venturesome
children's escapade, was what fascinated me most. 
Indeed I felt that we two were like children under the
gaze of a man of the world---who lived by his sword. 
And I said recklessly:

  ``Yes, you ought to come along with us for a trip. You
would see a lot of things for yourself.''

  Mr. Blunt's expression had grown even more indulgent
if that were possible. Yet there was something ineradicably
ambiguous about that man. I did not like the indefinable
tone in which he observed:

  ``You are perfectly reckless in what you say, Do<n~>a
Rita. It has become a habit with you of late.''

  ``While with you reserve is a second nature, Don
Juan.''

  This was uttered with the gentlest, almost tender, irony. 
Mr. Blunt waited a while before he said:

  ``Certainly. . . . Would you have liked me to be
otherwise?''

  She extended her hand to him on a sudden impulse.

  ``Forgive me! I may have been unjust, and you may
only have been loyal. The falseness is not in us. The
fault is in life itself, I suppose. I have been always frank
with you.''

  ``And I obedient,'' he said, bowing low over her hand. 
He turned away, paused to look at me for some time and
finally gave me the correct sort of nod. But he said nothing
and went out, or rather lounged out with his worldly
manner of perfect ease under all conceivable circumstances.
With her head lowered Do<n~>a Rita watched him
till he actually shut the door behind him. I was facing
her and only heard the door close.

  ``Don't stare at me,'' were the first words she said.

  It was difficult to obey that request. I didn't know
exactly where to look, while I sat facing her. So I got
up, vaguely full of goodwill, prepared even to move off
as far as the window, when she commanded:

  ``Don't turn your back on me.''

  I chose to understand it symbolically.

  ``You know very well I could never do that. I couldn't. 
Not even if I wanted to.'' And I added: ``It's too late
now.''

  ``Well, then, sit down. Sit down on this couch.''

  I sat down on the couch. Unwillingly? Yes. I was at
that stage when all her words, all her gestures, all her
silences were a heavy trial to me, put a stress on my resolution,
on that fidelity to myself and to her which lay like
a leaden weight on my untried heart. But I didn't sit
down very far away from her, though that soft and billowy
couch was big enough, God knows! No, not very far from
her. Self-control, dignity, hopelessness itself, have their
limits. The halo of her tawny hair stirred as I let myself
drop by her side. Whereupon she flung one arm round
my neck, leaned her temple against my shoulder and began
to sob; but that I could only guess from her slight, convulsive
movements because in our relative positions I
could only see the mass of her tawny hair brushed back,
yet with a halo of escaped hair which as I bent my head
over her tickled my lips, my cheek, in a maddening manner.

  We sat like two venturesome children in an illustration
to a tale, scared by their adventure. But not for long. 
As I instinctively, yet timidly, sought for her other hand
I felt a tear strike the back of mine, big and heavy as if
fallen from a great height. It was too much for me. I
must have given a nervous start. At once I heard a
murmur: ``You had better go away now.''

  I withdrew myself gently from under the light weight
of her head, from this unspeakable bliss and inconceivable
misery, and had the absurd impression of leaving her suspended
in the air. And I moved away on tiptoe.

  Like an inspired blind man led by Providence I found
my way out of the room but really I saw nothing, till in
the hall the maid appeared by enchantment before me
holding up my overcoat. I let her help me into it. And
then (again as if by enchantment) she had my hat in her
hand.

  ``No. Madame isn't happy,'' I whispered to her distractedly.

  She let me take my hat out of her hand and while I
was putting it on my head I heard an austere whisper:

  ``Madame should listen to her heart.''

  Austere is not the word; it was almost freezing, this
unexpected, dispassionate rustle of words. I had to repress
a shudder, and as coldly as herself I murmured:

  ``She has done that once too often.''

  Rose was standing very close to me and I caught distinctly
the note of scorn in her indulgent compassion.

  ``Oh, that! . . . Madame is like a child.''

  It was impossible to get the bearing of that utterance
from that girl who, as Do<n~>a Rita herself had told me, was
the most taciturn of human beings; and yet of all human
beings the one nearest to herself. I seized her head in
my hands and turning up her face I looked straight down
into her black eyes which should have been lustrous. 
Like a piece of glass breathed upon they reflected no
light, revealed no depths, and under my ardent gaze remained
tarnished, misty, unconscious.

  ``Will Monsieur kindly let me go. Monsieur shouldn't
play the child, either.'' (I let her go.) ``Madame could
have the world at her feet. Indeed she has it there
only she doesn't care for it.''

  How talkative she was, this maid with unsealed lips
For some reason or other this last statement of hers
brought me immense comfort.

  ``Yes?'' I whispered breathlessly.

  ``Yes! But in that case what's the use of living in fear
and torment?'' she went on, revealing a little more of
herself to my astonishment. She opened the door for me
and added:

  ``Those that don't care to stoop ought at least make
themselves happy.''

  I turned in the very doorway: ``There is something
which prevents that?'' I suggested.

  ``To be sure there is. _Bonjour,_ Monsieur.''



 		   PART FOUR

			I

  ``Such a charming lady in a grey silk dress and a hand
as white as snow. She looked at me through such funny
glasses on the end of a long handle. A very great lady
but her voice was as kind as the voice of a saint. I
have never seen anything like that. She made me feel so
timid.''

  The voice uttering these words was the voice of Therese
and I looked at her from a bed draped heavily in brown
silk curtains fantastically looped up from ceiling to floor. 
The glow of a sunshiny day was toned down by closed
jalousies to a mere transparency of darkness. In this thin
medium Therese's form appeared flat, without detail, as
if cut out of black paper. It glided towards the window
and with a click and a scrape let in the full flood of
light which smote my aching eyeballs painfully.

  In truth all that night had been the abomination of
desolation to me. After wrestling with my thoughts, if
the acute consciousness of a woman's existence may be
called a thought, I had apparently dropped off to sleep
only to go on wrestling with a nightmare, a senseless and
terrifying dream of being in bonds which, even after
waking, made me feel powerless in all my limbs. I lay
still, suffering acutely from a renewed sense of existence,
unable to lift an arm, and wondering why I was not at sea,
how long I had slept, how long Therese had been talking
before her voice had reached me in that purgatory of hopeless
longing and unanswerable questions to which I was
condemned.

  It was Therese's habit to begin talking directly she
entered the room with the tray of morning coffee. This
was her method for waking me up. I generally regained
the consciousness of the external world on some pious
phrase asserting the spiritual comfort of early mass, or
on angry lamentations about the unconscionable rapacity
of the dealers in fish and vegetables; for after mass it was
Therese's practice to do the marketing for the house. As
a matter of fact the necessity of having to pay, to actually
give money to people, infuriated the pious Therese. But
the matter of this morning's speech was so extraordinary
that it might have been the prolongation of a nightmare:
a man in bonds having to listen to weird and unaccountable
speeches against which, he doesn't know why, his
very soul revolts.

  In sober truth my soul remained in revolt though I was
convinced that I was no longer dreaming. I watched
Therese coming away from the window with that helpless
dread a man bound hand and foot may be excused to feel. 
For in such a situation even the absurd may appear
ominous. She came up close to the bed and folding her
hands meekly in front of her turned her eyes up to the
ceiling,

  ``If I had been her daughter she couldn't have spoken
more softly to me,'' she said sentimentally,

  I made a great effort to speak.

  ``Mademoiselle Therese, you are raving.''

  ``She addressed me as Mademoiselle, too, so nicely. I
was struck with veneration for her white hair but her
face, believe me, my dear young Monsieur, has not so
many wrinkles as mine.''

  She compressed her lips with an angry glance at me as
if I could help her wrinkles, then she sighed.

  ``God sends wrinkles, but what is our face?'' she
digressed in a tone of great humility. ``We shall have
glorious faces in Paradise. But meantime God has
permitted me to preserve a smooth heart.''

  ``Are you going to keep on like this much longer?''
I fairly shouted at her. ``What are you talking about?''

  ``I am talking about the sweet old lady who came in a
carriage. Not a fiacre. I can tell a fiacre. In a little
carriage shut in with glass all in front. I suppose she is
very rich. The carriage was very shiny outside and all
beautiful grey stuff inside. I opened the door to her
myself. She got out slowly like a queen. I was struck
all of a heap. Such a shiny beautiful little carriage. There
were blue silk tassels inside, beautiful silk tassels.''

  Obviously Therese had been very much impressed by
a brougham, though she didn't know the name for it. 
Of all the town she knew nothing but the streets which led
to a neighbouring church frequented only by the poorer
classes and the humble quarter around, where she did her
marketing. Besides, she was accustomed to glide along
the walls with her eyes cast down; for her natural boldness
would never show itself through that nun-like mien
except when bargaining, if only on a matter of threepence. 
Such a turn-out had never been presented to her notice
before. The traffic in the street of the Consuls was
mostly pedestrian and far from fashionable. And anyhow
Therese never looked out of the window. She
lurked in the depths of the house like some kind of spider
that shuns attention. She used to dart at one from some
dark recesses which I never explored.

  Yet it seemed to me that she exaggerated her raptures
for some reason or other. With her it was very difficult
to distinguish between craft and innocence.

  ``Do you mean to say,'' I asked suspiciously, ``that an
old lady wants to hire an apartment here? I hope you
told her there was no room, because, you know, this house
is not exactly the thing for venerable old ladies.''

  ``Don't make me angry, my dear young Monsieur. I
have been to confession this morning. Aren't you comfortable?
Isn't the house appointed richly enough for
anybody?''

  That girl with a peasant-nun's face had never seen the
inside of a house other than some half-ruined _caserio_ in
her native hills.

  I pointed out to her that this was not a matter of
splendour or comfort but of ``convenances.'' She pricked
up her ears at that word which probably she had never
heard before; but with woman's uncanny intuition I
believe she understood perfectly what I meant. Her air
of saintly patience became so pronounced that with my
own poor intuition I perceived that she was raging at
me inwardly. Her weather-tanned complexion, already
affected by her confined life, took on an extraordinary
clayey aspect which reminded me of a strange head painted
by El Greco which my friend Prax had hung on one of his
walls and used to rail at; yet not without a certain respect.

  Therese, with her hands still meekly folded about her
waist, had mastered the feelings of anger so unbecoming
to a person whose sins had been absolved only about three
hours before, and asked me with an insinuating softness
whether she wasn't an honest girl enough to look after
any old lady belonging to a world which after all was
sinful. She reminded me that she had kept house ever
since she was ``so high'' for her uncle the priest: a man
well-known for his saintliness in a large district extending
even beyond Pampeluna. The character of a house
depended upon the person who ruled it. She didn't know
what impenitent wretches had been breathing within
these walls in the time of that godless and wicked man
who had planted every seed of perdition in ``our Rita's''
ill-disposed heart. But he was dead and she, Therese,
knew for certain that wickedness perished utterly, because
of God's anger (_la col<e`>re du bon Dieu_). She would have no
hesitation in receiving a bishop, if need be, since ``our
Rita,'' with her poor, wretched, unbelieving heart, had
nothing more to do with the house.

  All this came out of her like an unctuous trickle of
some acrid oil. The low, voluble delivery was enough by
itself to compel my attention.

  ``You think you know your sister's heart,'' I asked.

  She made small eyes at me to discover if I was angry. 
She seemed to have an invincible faith in the virtuous
dispositions of young men. And as I had spoken in
measured tones and hadn't got red in the face she let
herself go.

  ``Black, my dear young Monsieur. Black. I always
knew it. Uncle, poor saintly man, was too holy to take
notice of anything. He was too busy with his thoughts
to listen to anything I had to say to him. For instance
as to her shamelessness. She was always ready to run
half naked about the hills . . .''

  ``Yes. After your goats. All day long. Why didn't
you mend her frocks?''

  ``Oh, you know about the goats. My dear young
Monsieur, I could never tell when she would fling over
her pretended sweetness and put her tongue out at me. 
Did she tell you about a boy, the son of pious and rich
parents, whom she tried to lead astray into the wildness
of thoughts like her own, till the poor dear child drove her
off because she outraged his modesty? I saw him often
with his parents at Sunday mass. The grace of God preserved
him and made him quite a gentleman in Paris. 
Perhaps it will touch Rita's heart, too, some day. But
she was awful then. When I wouldn't listen to her complaints
she would say: `All right, sister, I would just as
soon go clothed in rain and wind.' And such a bag of
bones, too, like the picture of a devil's imp. Ah, my
dear young Monsieur, you don't know how wicked her
heart is. You aren't bad enough for that yourself. I
don't believe you are evil at all in your innocent little
heart. I never heard you jeer at holy things. You are
only thoughtless. For instance, I have never seen you
make the sign of the cross in the morning. Why don't
you make a practice of crossing yourself directly you
open your eyes. It's a very good thing. It keeps Satan
off for the day.''

  She proffered that advice in a most matter-of-fact tone
as if it were a precaution against a cold, compressed her
lips, then returning to her fixed idea, ``But the house is
mine,'' she insisted very quietly with an accent which
made me feel that Satan himself would never manage to
tear it out of her hands.

  ``And so I told the great lady in grey. I told her that
my sister had given it to me and that surely God would
not let her take it away again.''

  ``You told that grey-headed lady, an utter stranger!
You are getting more crazy every day. You have neither
good sense nor good feeling, Mademoiselle Therese, let
me tell you. Do you talk about your sister to the butcher
and the greengrocer, too? A downright savage would
have more restraint. What's your object? What do
you expect from it? What pleasure do you get from it?
Do you think you please God by abusing your sister?
What do you think you are?''

  ``A poor lone girl amongst a lot of wicked people. Do you
think I wanted to go forth amongst those abominations?
It's that poor sinful Rita that wouldn't let me be where
I was, serving a holy man, next door to a church, and sure
of my share of Paradise. I simply obeyed my uncle. 
It's he who told me to go forth and attempt to save her
soul, bring her back to us, to a virtuous life. But what
would be the good of that? She is given over to worldly,
carnal thoughts. Of course we are a good family and my
uncle is a great man in the country, but where is the reputable
farmer or God-fearing man of that kind that would
dare to bring such a girl into his house to his mother and
sisters. No, let her give her ill-gotten wealth up to the
deserving and devote the rest of her life to repentance.''

  She uttered these righteous reflections and presented
this programme for the salvation of her sister's soul in a
reasonable convinced tone which was enough to give
goose flesh to one all over.

  ``Mademoiselle Therese,'' I said, ``you are nothing less
than a monster.''

  She received that true expression of my opinion as
though I had given her a sweet of a particularly delicious
kind. She liked to be abused. It pleased her to be
called names. I did let her have that satisfaction to her
heart's content. At last I stopped because I could do no
more, unless I got out of bed to beat her. I have a vague
notion that she would have liked that, too, but I didn't try. 
After I had stopped she waited a little before she raised
her downcast eyes.

  ``You are a dear, ignorant, flighty young gentleman,''
she said. ``Nobody can tell what a cross my sister is to
me except the good priest in the church where I go every
day.''

  ``And the mysterious lady in grey,'' I suggested sarcastically.

  ``Such a person might have guessed it,'' answered
Therese, seriously, ``but I told her nothing except that
this house had been given me in full property by our Rita. 
And I wouldn't have done that if she hadn't spoken to me
of my sister first. I can't tell too many people about that. 
One can't trust Rita. I know she doesn't fear God but
perhaps human respect may keep her from taking this
house back from me. If she doesn't want me to talk about
her to people why doesn't she give me a properly stamped
piece of paper for it?''

  She said all this rapidly in one breath and at the end had
a sort of anxious gasp which gave me the opportunity
to voice my surprise. It was immense.

  ``That lady, the strange lady, spoke to you of your
sister first!'' I cried.

  ``The lady asked me, after she had been in a little
time, whether really this house belonged to Madame de
Lastaola. She had been so sweet and kind and condescending
that I did not mind humiliating my spirit before
such a good Christian. I told her that I didn't know
how the poor sinner in her mad blindness called herself,
but that this house had been given to me truly enough
by my sister. She raised her eyebrows at that but she
looked at me at the same time so kindly, as much as to
say, `Don't trust much to that, my dear girl,' that I
couldn't help taking up her hand, soft as down, and kissing
it. She took it away pretty quick but she was not offended. 
But she only said, `That's very generous on your sister's
part,' in a way that made me run cold all over. I suppose
all the world knows our Rita for a shameless girl. It was
then that the lady took up those glasses on a long gold
handle and looked at me through them till I felt very much
abashed. She said to me, `There is nothing to be unhappy
about. Madame de Lastaola is a very remarkable person
who has done many surprising things. She is not to be
judged like other people and as far as I know she has never
wronged a single human being. . . .' That put heart
into me, I can tell you; and the lady told me then not to
disturb her son. She would wait till he woke up. She
knew he was a bad sleeper. I said to her: `Why, I can
hear the dear sweet gentleman this moment having his
bath in the fencing-room, and I took her into the studio.
They are there now and they are going to have their lunch
together at twelve o'clock.''

  ``Why on earth didn't you tell me at first that the
lady was Mrs. Blunt?''

  ``Didn't I? I thought I did,'' she said innocently. I
felt a sudden desire to get out of that house, to fly from
the reinforced Blunt element which was to me so oppressive.

  ``I want to get up and dress, Mademoiselle Therese,''
I said.

  She gave a slight start and without looking at me
again glided out of the room, the many folds of her brown
skirt remaining undisturbed as she moved.

  I looked at my watch; it was ten o'clock. Therese had
been late with my coffee. The delay was clearly caused
by the unexpected arrival of Mr. Blunt's mother, which
might or might not have been expected by her son. The
existence of those Blunts made me feel uncomfortable in
a peculiar way as though they had been the denizens of
another planet with a subtly different point of view and
something in the intelligence which was bound to remain
unknown to me. It caused in me a feeling of inferiority
which I intensely disliked. This did not arise from the
actual fact that those people originated in another continent.
I had met Americans before. And the Blunts
were Americans. But so little! That was the trouble. 
Captain Blunt might have been a Frenchman as far as
languages, tones, and manners went. But you could not
have mistaken him for one. . . . Why? You couldn't
tell. It was something indefinite. It occurred to me
while I was towelling hard my hair, face, and the back of
my neck, that I could not meet J. K. Blunt on equal terms
in any relation of life except perhaps arms in hand, and in
preference with pistols, which are less intimate, acting at a
distance---but arms of some sort. For physically his life,
which could be taken away from him, was exactly like mine,
held on the same terms and of the same vanishing quality.

  I would have smiled at my absurdity if all, even the
most intimate, vestige of gaiety had not been crushed
out of my heart by the intolerable weight of my love for
Rita. It crushed, it overshadowed, too, it was immense. 
If there were any smiles in the world (which I didn't believe)
I could not have seen them. Love for Rita . . .
if it was love, I asked myself despairingly, while I brushed
my hair before a glass. It did not seem to have any sort
of beginning as far as I could remember. A thing the
origin of which you cannot trace cannot be seriously
considered. It is an illusion. Or perhaps mine was a
physical state, some sort of disease akin to melancholia
which is a form of insanity? The only moments of relief
I could remember were when she and I would start
squabbling like two passionate infants in a nursery, over
anything under heaven, over a phrase, a word sometimes,
in the great light of the glass rotunda, disregarding the
quiet entrances and exits of the ever-active Rose, in
great bursts of voices and peals of laughter. . . .

  I felt tears come into my eyes at the memory of her
laughter, the true memory of the senses almost more
penetrating than the reality itself. It haunted me. All
that appertained to her haunted me with the same awful
intimacy, her whole form in the familiar pose, her very
substance in its colour and texture, her eyes, her lips,
the gleam of her teeth, the tawny mist of her hair, the
smoothness of her forehead, the faint scent that she used,
the very shape, feel, and warmth of her high-heeled slipper
that would sometimes in the heat of the discussion
drop on the floor with a crash, and which I would (always
in the heat of the discussion) pick up and toss back
on the couch without ceasing to argue. And besides
being haunted by what was Rita on earth I was haunted
also by her waywardness, her gentleness and her flame,
by that which the high gods called Rita when speaking
of her amongst themselves. Oh, yes, certainly I was
haunted by her but so was her sister Therese---who was
crazy. It proved nothing. As to her tears, since I had
not caused them, they only aroused my indignation. To
put her head on my shoulder, to weep these strange tears,
was nothing short of an outrageous liberty. It was a mere
emotional trick. She would have just as soon leaned her
head against the over-mantel of one of those tall, red
granite chimney-pieces in order to weep comfortably. And
then when she had no longer any need of support she dispensed
with it by simply telling me to go away. How
convenient! The request had sounded pathetic, almost
sacredly so, but then it might have been the exhibition of
the coolest possible impudence. With her one could not
tell. Sorrow, indifference, tears, smiles, all with her
seemed to have a hidden meaning. Nothing could be
trusted. . . . ``Heavens! Am I as crazy as Therese?''
I asked myself with a passing chill of fear, while occupied
in equalizing the ends of my neck-tie.

  I felt suddenly that ``this sort of thing'' would kill me. 
The definition of the cause was vague, but the thought
itself was no mere morbid artificiality of sentiment but a
genuine conviction. ``That sort of thing'' was what I
would have to die from. It wouldn't be from the innumerable
doubts. Any sort of certitude would be also
deadly. It wouldn't be from a stab---a kiss would kill
me as surely. It would not be from a frown or from any
particular word or any particular act---but from having
to bear them all, together and in succession---from having
to live with ``that sort of thing.'' About the time I
finished with my neck-tie I had done with life too. I
absolutely did not care because I couldn't tell whether,
mentally and physically, from the roots of my hair to
the soles of my feet---whether I was more weary, or
unhappy.

  And now my toilet was finished, my occupation was
gone. An immense distress descended upon me. It has
been observed that the routine of daily life, that arbitrary
system of trifles, is a great moral support. But my toilet
was finished, I had nothing more to do of those things
consecrated by usage and which leave you no option. 
The exercise of any kind of volition by a man whose consciousness
is reduced to the sensation that he is being
killed by ``that sort of thing'' cannot be anything but
mere trifling with death, an insincere pose before himself.
I wasn't capable of it. It was then that I discovered
that being killed by ``that sort of thing,'' I mean the
absolute conviction of it, was, so to speak, nothing in itself. 
The horrible part was the waiting. That was the cruelty,
the tragedy, the bitterness of it. ``Why the devil don't
I drop dead now?'' I asked myself peevishly, taking a
clean handkerchief out of the drawer and stuffing it in my
pocket.

  This was absolutely the last thing, the last ceremony
of an imperative rite. I was abandoned to myself now
and it was terrible. Generally I used to go out, walk
down to the port, take a look at the craft I loved with a
sentiment that was extremely complex, being mixed up
with the image of a woman; perhaps go on board, not
because there was anything for me to do there but just
for nothing, for happiness, simply as a man will sit contented
in the companionship of the beloved object. For
lunch I had the choice of two places, one Bohemian, the
other select, even aristocratic, where I had still my reserved
table in the _petit salon,_ up the white staircase. 
In both places I had friends who treated my erratic
appearances with discretion, in one case tinged with
respect, in the other with a certain amused tolerance. I
owed this tolerance to the most careless, the most confirmed
of those Bohemians (his beard had streaks of grey
amongst its many other tints) who, once bringing his
heavy hand down on my shoulder, took my defence
against the charge of being disloyal and even foreign to
that milieu of earnest visions taking beautiful and revolutionary
shapes in the smoke of pipes, in the jingle of
glasses.

  ``That fellow (_ce gar<c,>on_) is a primitive nature, but he
may be an artist in a sense. He has broken away from
his conventions. He is trying to put a special vibration
and his own notion of colour into his life; and perhaps
even to give it a modelling according to his own ideas. And
for all you know he may be on the track of a masterpiece;
but observe: if it happens to be one nobody will see it. 
It can be only for himself. And even he won't be able
to see it in its completeness except on his death-bed. 
There is something fine in that.''

  I had blushed with pleasure; such fine ideas had
never entered my head. But there was something fine.
. . . How far all this seemed! How mute and how still!
What a phantom he was, that man with a beard of at least
seven tones of brown. And those shades of the other kind
such as Baptiste with the shaven diplomatic face, the
_ma<i^>tre d'h<o^>tel_ in charge of the _petit salon,_ taking my hat
and stick from me with a deferential remark: ``Monsieur
is not very often seen nowadays.'' And those other
well-groomed heads raised and nodding at my passage---
``_Bonjour._'' ``_Bonjour_''---following me with interested
eyes; these young X.s and Z.s, low-toned, markedly discreet,
lounging up to my table on their way out with
murmurs: ``Are you well?''---``Will one see you
anywhere this evening?''---not from curiosity, God
forbid, but just from friendliness; and passing on almost
without waiting for an answer. What had I to do with
them, this elegant dust, these moulds of provincial
fashion?

  I also often lunched with Do<n~>a Rita without invitation.
But that was now unthinkable. What had I to
do with a woman who allowed somebody else to make her
cry and then with an amazing lack of good feeling did
her offensive weeping on my shoulder? Obviously I
could have nothing to do with her. My five minutes'
meditation in the middle of the bedroom came to an
end without even a sigh. The dead don't sigh, and for
all practical purposes I was that, except for the final
consummation, the growing cold, the _rigor mortis_---that
blessed state! With measured steps I crossed the landing
to my sitting-room.


			II

  The windows of that room gave out on the street of the
Consuls which as usual was silent. And the house itself
below me and above me was soundless, perfectly still. 
In general the house was quiet, dumbly quiet, without
resonances of any sort, something like what one would
imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose
it was very solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the
stillness that feeling of security and peace which ought
to have been associated with it. It is, I believe, generally
admitted that the dead are glad to be at rest. But I
wasn't at rest. What was wrong with that silence?
There was something incongruous in that peace. What
was it that had got into that stillness? Suddenly I remembered:
the mother of Captain Blunt.

  Why had she come all the way from Paris? And why
should I bother my head about it? H'm---the Blunt
atmosphere, the reinforced Blunt vibration stealing
through the walls, through the thick walls and the almost
more solid stillness. Nothing to me, of course---the
movements of Mme. Blunt, _m<e`>re._ It was maternal
affection which had brought her south by either the
evening or morning Rapide, to take anxious stock of the
ravages of that insomnia. Very good thing, insomnia, for
a cavalry officer perpetually on outpost duty, a real god-send,
so to speak; but on leave a truly devilish condition
to be in.

  The above sequence of thoughts was entirely unsympathetic
and it was followed by a feeling of satisfaction
that I, at any rate, was not suffering from insomnia. 
I could always sleep in the end. In the end. Escape
into a nightmare. Wouldn't he revel in that if he could!
But that wasn't for him. He had to toss about open-eyed
all night and get up weary, weary. But oh, wasn't I
weary, too, waiting for a sleep without dreams.

  I heard the door behind me open. I had been standing
with my face to the window and, I declare, not knowing
what I was looking at across the road---the Desert of
Sahara or a wall of bricks, a landscape of rivers and forests
or only the Consulate of Paraguay. But I had been
thinking, apparently, of Mr. Blunt with such intensity
that when I saw him enter the room it didn't really make
much difference. When I turned about the door behind
him was already shut. He advanced towards me, correct,
supple, hollow-eyed, and smiling; and as to his costume
ready to go out except for the old shooting jacket which
he must have affectioned particularly, for he never lost
any time in getting into it at every opportunity. Its
material was some tweed mixture; it had gone inconceivably
shabby, it was shrunk from old age, it was ragged
at the elbows; but any one could see at a glance that it had
been made in London by a celebrated tailor, by a distinguished
specialist. Blunt came towards me in all the
elegance of his slimness and affirming in every line of his
face and body, in the correct set of his shoulders and the
careless freedom of his movements, the superiority, the
inexpressible superiority, the unconscious, the unmarked,
the not-to-be-described, and even not-to-be-caught, superiority
of the naturally born and the perfectly finished man
of the world, over the simple young man. He was smiling,
easy, correct, perfectly delightful, fit to kill.

  He had come to ask me, if I had no other engagement,
to lunch with him and his mother in about an hour's time.
He did it in a most _d<e'>gag<e'>_ tone. His mother had given
him a surprise. The completest . . . The foundation
of his mother's psychology was her delightful unexpectedness.
She could never let things be (this in a peculiar
tone which he checked at once) and he really would take
it very kindly of me if I came to break the t<e^>te-<a`>-t<e^>te for
a while (that is if I had no other engagement. Flash
of teeth). His mother was exquisitely and tenderly
absurd. She had taken it into her head that his health
was endangered in some way. And when she took anything
into her head . . . Perhaps I might find something
to say which would reassure her. His mother had two
long conversations with Mills on his passage through
Paris and had heard of me (I knew how that thick man
could speak of people, he interjected ambiguously) and
his mother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that
was rare (filially humorous accent here and a softer
flash of teeth), was very anxious to have me presented to
her (courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hoped I
wouldn't mind if she treated me a little as an ``interesting
young man.'' His mother had never got over her seventeenth
year, and the manner of the spoilt beauty of at
least three counties at the back of the Carolinas. That
again got overlaid by the _sans-fa<c,>on_ of a _grande dame_ of
the Second Empire.

  I accepted the invitation with a worldly grin and a
perfectly just intonation, because I really didn't care what
I did. I only wondered vaguely why that fellow required
all the air in the room for himself. There did not seem
enough left to go down my throat. I didn't say that I
would come with pleasure or that I would be delighted,
but I said that I would come. He seemed to forget his
tongue in his head, put his hands in his pockets and moved
about vaguely. ``I am a little nervous this morning,''
he said in French, stopping short and looking we straight
in the eyes. His own were deep sunk, dark, fatal. I
asked with some malice, that no one could have detected
in my intonation, ``How's that sleeplessness?''

  He muttered through his teeth, ``_Mal. Je ne dors
plus._'' He moved off to stand at the window with his
back to the room. I sat down on a sofa that was there
and put my feet up, and silence took possession of the
room.

  ``Isn't this street ridiculous?'' said Blunt suddenly, and
crossing the room rapidly waved his hand to me, ``_A
bient<o^>t donc,_'' and was gone. He had seared himself into
my mind. I did not understand him nor his mother then;
which made them more impressive; but I have discovered
since that those two figures required no mystery to make
them memorable. Of course it isn't every day that one
meets a mother that lives by her wits and a son that lives
by his sword, but there was a perfect finish about their
ambiguous personalities which is not to be met twice in
a life-time. I shall never forget that grey dress with ample
skirts and long corsage yet with infinite style, the ancient
as if ghostly beauty of outlines, the black lace, the silver
hair, the harmonious, restrained movements of those white,
soft hands like the hands of a queen---or an abbess; and
in the general fresh effect of her person the brilliant eyes
like two stars with the calm reposeful way they had of
moving on and off one, as if nothing in the world had the
right to veil itself before their once sovereign beauty. 
Captain Blunt with smiling formality introduced me by
name, adding with a certain relaxation of the formal tone
the comment: ``The `Monsieur George' whose fame you
tell me has reached even Paris.'' Mrs. Blunt's reception
of me, glance, tones, even to the attitude of the admirably
corseted figure, was most friendly, approaching the limit
of half-familiarity. I had the feeling that I was beholding
in her a captured ideal. No common experience! But I
didn't care. It was very lucky perhaps for me that in a
way I was like a very sick man who has yet preserved all
his lucidity. I was not even wondering to myself at
what on earth I was doing there. She breathed out:
``_Comme c'est romantique,_'' at large to the dusty studio
as it were; then pointing to a chair at her right hand,
and bending slightly towards me she said:

  ``I have heard this name murmured by pretty lips in
more than one royalist salon.''

  I didn't say anything to that ingratiating speech. I had
only an odd thought that she could not have had such a
figure, nothing like it, when she was seventeen and wore
snowy muslin dresses on the family plantation in South
Carolina, in preabolition days.

  ``You won't mind, I am sure, if an old woman whose
heart is still young elects to call you by it,'' she declared.

  ``Certainly, Madame. It will be more romantic,'' I
assented with a respectful bow.

  She dropped a calm: ``Yes---there is nothing like
romance while one is young. So I will call you Monsieur
George,'' she paused and then added, ``I could never get
old,'' in a matter-of-fact final tone as one would remark,
``I could never learn to swim,'' and I had the presence of
mind to say in a tone to match, ``_C'est <e'>vident, Madame._''
It was evident. She couldn't get old; and across the table
her thirty-year-old son who couldn't get sleep sat listening
with courteous detachment and the narrowest possible
line of white underlining his silky black moustache.

  ``Your services are immensely appreciated,'' she said
with an amusing touch of importance as of a great official
lady. ``Immensely appreciated by people in a position
to understand the great significance of the Carlist movement
in the South. There it has to combat anarchism,
too. I who have lived through the Commune . . .''

  Therese came in with a dish, and for the rest of the
lunch the conversation so well begun drifted amongst the
most appalling inanities of the religious-royalist-legitimist
order. The ears of all the Bourbons in the world
must have been burning. Mrs. Blunt seemed to have
come into personal contact with a good many of them and
the marvellous insipidity of her recollections was astonishing
to my inexperience. I looked at her from time to
time thinking: She has seen slavery. she has seen the
Commune, she knows two continents, she has seen a civil
war, the glory of the Second Empire, the horrors of two
sieges; she has been in contact with marked personalities,
with great events, she has lived on her wealth, on her
personality, and there she is with her plumage unruffled,
as glossy as ever, unable to get old:---a sort of Ph<oe>nix
free from the slightest signs of ashes and dust, all complacent
amongst those inanities as if there had been
nothing else in the world. In my youthful haste I asked
myself what sort of airy soul she had.

  At last Therese put a dish of fruit on the table, a small
collection of oranges, raisins, and nuts. No doubt she
had bought that lot very cheap and it did not look at all
inviting. Captain Blunt jumped up. ``My mother can't
stand tobacco smoke. Will you keep her company, _mon
cher,_ while I take a turn with a cigar in that ridiculous
garden. The brougham from the hotel will be here very
soon.''

  He left us in the white flash of an apologetic grin. 
Almost directly he reappeared, visible from head to foot
through the glass side of the studio, pacing up and down
the central path of that ``ridiculous'' garden: for its
elegance and its air of good breeding the most remarkable
figure that I have ever seen before or since. He had
changed his coat. Madame Blunt _m<e`>re_ lowered the long-handled
glasses through which she had been contemplating
him with an appraising, absorbed expression which had
nothing maternal in it. But what she said to me
was:

  ``You understand my anxieties while he is campaigning
with the King.''

  She had spoken in French and she had used the expression
``_mes transes_'' but for all the rest, intonation, bearing,
solemnity, she might have been referring to one of the
Bourbons. I am sure that not a single one of them looked
half as aristocratic as her son.

  ``I understand perfectly, Madame. But then that life
is so romantic.''

  ``Hundreds of young men belonging to a certain sphere
are doing that,'' she said very distinctly, ``only their case
is different. They have their positions, their families to
go back to; but we are different. We are exiles, except
of course for the ideals, the kindred spirit, the friendships
of old standing we have in France. Should my son come
out unscathed he has no one but me and I have no one
but him. I have to think of his life. Mr. Mills (what
a distinguished mind that is!) has reassured me as to my
son's health. But he sleeps very badly, doesn't he?''

  I murmured something affirmative in a doubtful tone
and she remarked quaintly, with a certain curtness, ``It's
so unnecessary, this worry! The unfortunate position of
an exile has its advantages. At a certain height of social
position (wealth has got nothing to do with it, we have
been ruined in a most righteous cause), at a certain established
height one can disregard narrow prejudices. You
see examples in the aristocracies of all the countries. 
A chivalrous young American may offer his life for a
remote ideal which yet may belong to his familial tradition. 
We, in our great country, have every sort of tradition.
But a young man of good connections and distinguished
relations must settle down some day, dispose of his life.''

  ``No doubt, Madame,'' I said, raising my eyes to
the figure outside---``_Am<e'>ricain, Catholique et gentilhomme_''---
walking up and down the path with a cigar
which he was not smoking. ``For myself, I don't know
anything about those necessities. I have broken away
for ever from those things.''

  ``Yes, Mr. Mills talked to me about you. What a
golden heart that is. His sympathies are infinite.''

  I thought suddenly of Mills pronouncing on Mme. 
Blunt, whatever his text on me might have been: ``She
lives by her wits.'' Was she exercising her wits on me
for some purpose of her own? And I observed coldly:

  ``I really know your son so very little.''

  ``Oh, _voyons,_'' she protested. ``I am aware that you
are very much younger, but the similitudes of opinions,
origins and perhaps at bottom, faintly, of character, of
chivalrous devotion---no, you must be able to understand
him in a measure. He is infinitely scrupulous and
recklessly brave.''

  I listened deferentially to the end yet with every
nerve in my body tingling in hostile response to the
Blunt vibration, which seemed to have got into my
very hair.

  ``I am convinced of it, Madame. I have even heard of
your son's bravery. It's extremely natural in a man
who, in his own words, `lives by his sword.' ''

  She suddenly departed from her almost inhuman perfection,
betrayed ``nerves'' like a common mortal, of
course very slightly, but in her it meant more than a
blaze of fury from a vessel of inferior clay. Her admirable
little foot, marvellously shod in a black shoe, tapped
the floor irritably. But even in that display there was
something exquisitely delicate. The very anger in her
voice was silvery, as it were, and more like the petulance
of a seventeen-year-old beauty.

  ``What nonsense! A Blunt doesn't hire himself.''

  ``Some princely families,'' I said, ``were founded by
men who have done that very thing. The great Condottieri,
you know.''

  It was in an almost tempestuous tone that she made
me observe that we were not living in the fifteenth century.
She gave me also to understand with some spirit
that there was no question here of founding a family. 
Her son was very far from being the first of the name. 
His importance lay rather in being the last of a race
which had totally perished, she added in a completely
drawing-room tone, ``in our Civil War.''

  She had mastered her irritation and through the glass
side of the room sent a wistful smile to his address, but
I noticed the yet unextinguished anger in her eyes full of
fire under her beautiful white eyebrows. For she was
growing old! Oh, yes, she was growing old, and secretly
weary, and perhaps desperate.


			III

  Without caring much about it I was conscious of sudden
illumination. I said to myself confidently that these two
people had been quarrelling all the morning. I had
discovered the secret of my invitation to that lunch. 
They did not care to face the strain of some obstinate,
inconclusive discussion for fear, maybe, of it ending in a
serious quarrel. And so they had agreed that I should
be fetched downstairs to create a diversion. I cannot
say I felt annoyed. I didn't care. My perspicacity did
not please me either. I wished they had left me alone---
but nothing mattered. They must have been in their
superiority accustomed to make use of people, without
compunction. From necessity, too. She especially. She
lived by her wits. The silence had grown so marked that
I had at last to raise my eyes; and the first thing I
observed was that Captain Blunt was no longer to be seen
in the garden. Must have gone indoors. Would rejoin
us in a moment. Then I would leave mother and son to
themselves.

  The next thing I noticed was that a great mellowness
had descended upon the mother of the last of his
race. But these terms, irritation, mellowness, appeared
gross when applied to her. It is impossible to give an
idea of the refinement and subtlety of all her transformations.
She smiled faintly at me.

  ``But all this is beside the point. The real point is
that my son, like all fine natures, is a being of strange
contradictions which the trials of life have not yet reconciled
in him. With me it is a little different. The trials
fell mainly to my share---and of course I have lived
longer. And then men are much more complex than
women, much more difficult, too. And you, Monsieur
George? Are you complex, with unexpected resistances
and difficulties in your _<e^>tre intime_---your inner self? I
wonder now . . .''

  The Blunt atmosphere seemed to vibrate all over my
skin. I disregarded the symptom. ``Madame,'' I said,
``I have never tried to find out what sort of being I am.''

  ``Ah, that's very wrong. We ought to reflect on what
manner of beings we are. Of course we are all sinners. 
My John is a sinner like the others,'' she declared further,
with a sort of proud tenderness as though our common
lot must have felt honoured and to a certain extent purified
by this condescending recognition.

  ``You are too young perhaps as yet . . . But as to my
John,'' she broke off, leaning her elbow on the table and
supporting her head on her old, impeccably shaped, white
fore-arm emerging from a lot of precious, still older, lace
trimming the short sleeve. ``The trouble is that he
suffers from a profound discord between the necessary
reactions to life and even the impulses of nature and the
lofty idealism of his feelings; I may say, of his principles. 
I assure you that he won't even let his heart speak uncontradicted.''

  I am sure I don't know what particular devil looks
after the associations of memory, and I can't even imagine
the shock which it would have been for Mrs. Blunt
to learn that the words issuing from her lips had awakened
in me the visual perception of a dark-skinned, hard-driven
lady's maid with tarnished eyes; even of the tireless
Rose handing me my hat while breathing out the
enigmatic words: ``Madame should listen to her heart.''
A wave from the atmosphere of another house rolled in,
overwhelming and fiery, seductive and cruel, through the
Blunt vibration, bursting through it as through tissue
paper and filling my heart with sweet murmurs and distracting
images, till it seemed to break, leaving an empty
stillness in my breast.

  After that for a long time I heard Mme. Blunt _m<e`>re_
talking with extreme fluency and I even caught the individual
words, but I could not in the revulsion of my feelings
get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of life
in general, of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its
surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice
and rare personalities that drift on it as if on the sea; of
the distinction that letters and art gave to it, the nobility
and consolations there are in <ae>sthetics, of the privileges
they confer on individuals and (this was the first
connected statement I caught) that Mills agreed with
her in the general point of view as to the inner worth of
individualities and in the particular instance of it on
which she had opened to him her innermost heart. Mills
had a universal mind. His sympathy was universal, too. 
He had that large comprehension---oh, not cynical, not
at all cynical, in fact rather tender---which was found in
its perfection only in some rare, very rare Englishmen. 
The dear creature was romantic, too. Of course he was
reserved in his speech but she understood Mills perfectly. 
Mills apparently liked me very much.

  It was time for me to say something. There was
a challenge in the reposeful black eyes resting upon my
face. I murmured that I was very glad to hear it. She
waited a little, then uttered meaningly, ``Mr. Mills is
a little bit uneasy about you.''

  ``It's very good of him,'' I said. And indeed I thought
that it was very good of him, though I did ask myself
vaguely in my dulled brain why he should be uneasy.
Somehow it didn't occur to me to ask Mrs. Blunt. 
Whether she had expected me to do so or not I don't
know but after a while she changed the pose she had
kept so long and folded her wonderfully preserved white
arms. She looked a perfect picture in silver and grey,
with touches of black here and there. Still I said nothing
more in my dull misery. She waited a little longer, then
she woke me up with a crash. It was as if the house had
fallen, and yet she had only asked me:

  ``I believe you are received on very friendly terms by
Madame de Lastaola on account of your common exertions
for the cause. Very good friends, are you not?''

  ``You mean Rita,'' I said stupidly, but I felt stupid,
like a man who wakes up only to be hit on the head.

  ``Oh, Rita,'' she repeated with unexpected acidity,
which somehow made me feel guilty of an incredible
breach of good manners. ``H'm, Rita. . . . Oh, well, let
it be Rita---for the present. Though why she should be
deprived of her name in conversation about her, really I
don't understand. Unless a very special intimacy . . .''

  She was distinctly annoyed. I said sulkily, ``It isn't
her name.''

  ``It is her choice, I understand, which seems almost a
better title to recognition on the part of the world. It
didn't strike you so before? Well, it seems to me that
choice has got more right to be respected than heredity
or law. Moreover, Mme. de Lastaola,'' she continued in
an insinuating voice, ``that most rare and fascinating
young woman is, as a friend like you cannot deny, outside
legality altogether. Even in that she is an exceptional
creature. For she is exceptional---you agree?''

  I had gone dumb, I could only stare at her.

  ``Oh, I see, you agree. No friend of hers could deny.''

  ``Madame,'' I burst out, ``I don't know where a question
of friendship comes in here with a person whom you
yourself call so exceptional. I really don't know how
she looks upon me. Our intercourse is of course very
close and confidential. Is that also talked about in
Paris?''

  ``Not at all, not in the least,'' said Mrs. Blunt, easy,
equable, but with her calm, sparkling eyes holding me in
angry subjection. ``Nothing of the sort is being talked
about. The references to Mme. de Lastaola are in a
very different tone, I can assure you, thanks to her discretion
in remaining here. And, I must say, thanks to
the discreet efforts of her friends. I am also a friend of
Mme. de Lastaola, you must know. Oh, no, I have never
spoken to her in my life and have seen her only twice, I
believe. I wrote to her though, that I admit. She or
rather the image of her has come into my life, into that
part of it where art and letters reign undisputed like a
sort of religion of beauty to which I have been faithful
through all the vicissitudes of my existence. Yes, I did
write to her and I have been preoccupied with her for a
long time. It arose from a picture, from two pictures
and also from a phrase pronounced by a man, who in the
science of life and in the perception of <ae>sthetic truth
had no equal in the world of culture. He said that there
was something in her of the women of all time. I suppose
he meant the inheritance of all the gifts that make
up an irresistible fascination---a great personality. Such
women are not born often. Most of them lack opportunities.
They never develop. They end obscurely. 
Here and there one survives to make her mark---even
in history. . . . And even that is not a very enviable fate. 
They are at another pole from the so-called dangerous
women who are merely coquettes. A coquette has got
to work for her success. The others have nothing to do
but simply exist. You perceive the view I take of the
difference?''

  I perceived the view. I said to myself that nothing in
the world could be more aristocratic. This was the
slave-owning woman who had never worked, even if she
had been reduced to live by her wits. She was a wonderful
old woman. She made me dumb. She held me
fascinated by the well-bred attitude, something sublimely
aloof in her air of wisdom.

  I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I
had been a mere slave of <ae>sthetics: the perfect grace, the
amazing poise of that venerable head, the assured as if
royal---yes, royal---even flow of the voice. . . . But
what was it she was talking about now? These were
no longer considerations about fatal women. She was
talking about her son again. My interest turned into
mere bitterness of contemptuous attention. For I couldn't
withhold it though I tried to let the stuff go by. Educated
in the most aristocratic college in Paris . . . at eighteen
. . . call of duty . . . with General Lee to the very last
cruel minute . . . after that catastrophe---end of the
world---return to France---to old friendships, infinite
kindness---but a life hollow, without occupation. . . . Then
1870---and chivalrous response to adopted country's call
and again emptiness, the chafing of a proud spirit without
aim and handicapped not exactly by poverty but by lack
of fortune. And she, the mother, having to look on at this
wasting of a most accomplished man, of a most chivalrous
nature that practically had no future before it.

  ``You understand me well, Monsieur George. A nature
like this! It is the most refined cruelty of fate to look at. 
I don't know whether I suffered more in times of war or
in times of peace. You understand?''

  I bowed my head in silence. What I couldn't understand
was why he delayed so long in joining us again.
Unless he had had enough of his mother? I thought
without any great resentment that I was being victimized;
but then it occurred to me that the cause of his
absence was quite simple. I was familiar enough with
his habits by this time to know that he often managed to
snatch an hour's sleep or so during the day. He had
gone and thrown himself on his bed.

  ``I admire him exceedingly,'' Mrs. Blunt was saying in
a tone which was not at all maternal. ``His distinction,
his fastidiousness, the earnest warmth of his heart. I
know him well. I assure you that I would never have
dared to suggest,'' she continued with an extraordinary
haughtiness of attitude and tone that aroused my attention,
``I would never have dared to put before him my
views of the extraordinary merits and the uncertain fate
of the exquisite woman of whom we speak, if I had not
been certain that, partly by my fault, I admit, his attention
has been attracted to her and his---his---his heart
engaged.''

  It was as if some one had poured a bucket of cold
water over my head. I woke up with a great shudder to
the acute perception of my own feelings and of that aristocrat's
incredible purpose. How it could have germinated,
grown and matured in that exclusive soil was inconceivable.
She had been inciting her son all the time
to undertake wonderful salvage work by annexing the
heiress of Henry All<e`>gre---the woman and the fortune.

  There must have been an amazed incredulity in my
eyes, to which her own responded by an unflinching
black brilliance which suddenly seemed to develop a
scorching quality even to the point of making me feel
extremely thirsty all of a sudden. For a time my
tongue literally clove to the roof of my mouth. I
don't know whether it was an illusion but it seemed to
me that Mrs. Blunt had nodded at me twice as if to
say: ``You are right, that's so.'' I made an effort to
speak but it was very poor, If she did hear me it was
because she must have been on the watch for the faintest
sound.

  ``His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two
thousand, all around,'' I mumbled.

  ``Altogether different. And it's no disparagement to a
woman surely. Of course her great fortune protects her
in a certain measure.''

  ``Does it?'' I faltered out and that time I really doubt
whether she heard me. Her aspect in my eyes had
changed. Her purpose being disclosed, her well-bred ease
appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous
device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded
contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a terrible
old woman with those straight, white wolfish eyebrows.
How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone
ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they
were as beautifully smooth as her voice when she admitted:
``That protection naturally is only partial. There is the
danger of her own self, poor girl. She requires guidance.''

  I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but
it was only assumed.

  ``I don't think she has done badly for herself, so far,''
I forced myself to say. ``I suppose you know that she
began life by herding the village goats.''

  In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just
the least bit. Oh, yes, she winced; but at the end of it
she smiled easily.

  ``No, I didn't know. So she told you her story! Oh,
well, I suppose you are very good friends. A goatherd---
really? In the fairy tale I believe the girl that marries
the prince is---what is it?---a _gardeuse d'oies_. And what
a thing to drag out against a woman. One might just as
soon reproach any of them for coming unclothed into the
world. They all do, you know. And then they become
what you will discover when you have lived longer, Monsieur
George---for the most part futile creatures, without
any sense of truth and beauty, drudges of all sorts, or else
dolls to dress. In a word---ordinary.''

  The implication of scorn in her tranquil manner was immense.
It seemed to condemn all those that were not born
in the Blunt connection. It was the perfect pride of Republican
aristocracy, which has no gradations and knows
no limit, and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it
ennobles everything it touches: people, ideas, even passing
tastes!

  ``How many of them,'' pursued Mrs. Blunt, ``have had
the good fortune, the leisure to develop their intelligence
and their beauty in <ae>sthetic conditions as this charming
woman had? Not one in a million. Perhaps not one in
an age.''

  ``The heiress of Henry All<e`>gre,'' I murmured.

  ``Precisely. But John wouldn't be marrying the heiress
of Henry All<e`>gre.''

  It was the first time that the frank word, the clear idea
came into the conversation and it made me feel ill with
a sort of enraged faintness.

  ``No.'' I said. ``It would be Mme. de Lastaola then.''

  ``Mme. la Comtesse de Lastaola as soon as she likes
after the success of this war.''

  ``And you believe in its success?''

  ``Do you?''

  ``Not for a moment,'' I declared, and was surprised to
see her look pleased.

  She was an aristocrat to the tips of her fingers; she really
didn't care for anybody. She had passed through the
Empire, she had lived through a siege, had rubbed shoulders
with the Commune, had seen everything, no doubt, of what
men are capable in the pursuit of their desires or in the
extremity of their distress, for love, for money, and even for
honour; and in her precarious connection with the very
highest spheres she had kept her own honourability unscathed
while she had lost all her prejudices. She was
above all that. Perhaps ``the world'' was the only thing
that could have the slightest checking influence; but when
I ventured to say something about the view it might
take of such an alliance she looked at me for a moment
with visible surprise.

  ``My dear Monsieur George, I have lived in the great
world all my life. It's the best that there is, but that's
only because there is nothing merely decent anywhere. 
It will accept anything, forgive anything, forget anything
in a few days. And after all who will he be marrying? A
charming, clever, rich and altogether uncommon woman. 
What did the world hear of her? Nothing. The little
it saw of her was in the Bois for a few hours every year,
riding by the side of a man of unique distinction and of
exclusive tastes, devoted to the cult of <ae>sthetic impressions;
a man of whom, as far as aspect, manner, and behaviour
goes, she might have been the daughter. I have
seen her myself. I went on purpose. I was immensely
struck. I was even moved. Yes. She might have been
---except for that something radiant in her that marked
her apart from all the other daughters of men. The few
remarkable personalities that count in society and who
were admitted into Henry All<e`>gre's Pavilion treated her
with punctilious reserve. I know that, I have made
enquiries. I know she sat there amongst them like a
marvellous child, and for the rest what can they say
about her? That when abandoned to herself by the death
of All<e`>gre she has made a mistake? I think that any
woman ought to be allowed one mistake in her life. The
worst they can say of her is that she discovered it, that she
had sent away a man in love directly she found out that
his love was not worth having; that she had told him to
go and look for his crown, and that, after dismissing him,
she had remained generously faithful to his cause, in her
person and fortune. And this, you will allow, is rather
uncommon upon the whole.''

  ``You make her out very magnificent,'' I murmured,
looking down upon the floor.

  ``Isn't she?'' exclaimed the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt,
with an almost youthful ingenuousness, and in those black
eyes which looked at me so calmly there was a flash of the
Southern beauty, still naive and romantic, as if altogether
untouched by experience. ``I don't think there is a
single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting person. 
Neither is there in my son. I suppose you won't deny
that he is uncommon.'' She paused.

  ``Absolutely,'' I said in a perfectly conventional tone. 
I was now on my mettle that she should not discover what
there was humanly common in my nature. She took my
answer at her own valuation and was satisfied.

  ``They can't fail to understand each other on the very
highest level of idealistic perceptions. Can you imagine
my John thrown away on some enamoured white goose
out of a stuffy old salon? Why, she couldn't even begin
to understand what he feels or what he needs.''

  ``Yes,'' I said impenetrably, ``he is not easy to understand.''

  ``I have reason to think,'' she said with a suppressed
smile, ``that he has a certain power over women. Of
course I don't know anything about his intimate life but
a whisper or two have reached me, like that, floating in
the air, and I could hardly suppose that he would find an
exceptional resistance in that quarter of all others. But
I should like to know the exact degree.''

  I disregarded an annoying tendency to feel dizzy that
came over me and was very careful in managing my voice. 

  ``May I ask, Madame, why you are telling me all this?''

  ``For two reasons,'' she condescended graciously.
``First of all because Mr. Mills told me that you were
much more mature than one would expect. In fact you
look much younger than I was prepared for.''

  ``Madame,'' I interrupted her, ``I may have a certain
capacity for action and for responsibility, but as to the
regions into which this very unexpected conversation has
taken me I am a great novice. They are outside my
interest. I have had no experience.''

  ``Don't make yourself out so hopeless,'' she said in a
spoilt-beauty tone. ``You have your intuitions. At any
rate you have a pair of eyes. You are everlastingly over
there, so I understand. Surely you have seen how far
they are . . .''

  I interrupted again and this time bitterly, but always
in a tone of polite enquiry:

  ``You think her facile, Madame?''

  She looked offended. ``I think her most fastidious. 
It is my son who is in question here.''

  And I understood then that she looked on her son as
irresistible. For my part I was just beginning to think
that it would be impossible for me to wait for his return. 
I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed sleeping
like a stone. But there was no denying that the mother
was holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice
Therese had opened the door, had put her small head in
and drawn it back like a tortoise. But for some time I
had lost the sense of us two being quite alone in the
studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner
but it lay now on the floor as if Therese had knocked it
down angrily with a broom for a heathen idol. It lay
there prostrate, handless, without its head, pathetic, like
the mangled victim of a crime.

  ``John is fastidious, too,'' began Mrs. Blunt again, ``Of
course you wouldn't suppose anything vulgar in his
resistances to a very real sentiment. One has got to
understand his psychology. He can't leave himself in
peace. He is exquisitely absurd.''

  I recognized the phrase. Mother and son talked of
each other in identical terms. But perhaps ``exquisitely
absurd'' was the Blunt family saying? There are such
sayings in families and generally there is some truth in
them. Perhaps this old woman was simply absurd. 
She continued:

  ``We had a most painful discussion all this morning. 
He is angry with me for suggesting the very thing his
whole being desires. I don't feel guilty. It's he who is
tormenting himself with his infinite scrupulosity.''

  ``Ah,'' I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the
model of some atrocious murder. ``Ah, the fortune. 
But that can be left alone.''

  ``What nonsense! How is it possible? It isn't contained
in a bag, you can't throw it into the sea. And
moreover, it isn't her fault. I am astonished that you
should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy. No, it
isn't her fortune that checks my son; it's something much
more subtle. Not so much her history as her position. 
He is absurd. It isn't what has happened in her life. It's
her very freedom that makes him torment himself and
her, too---as far as I can understand.''

  I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must
really get away from there.

  Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.

  ``For all his superiority he is a man of the world and
shares to a certain extent its current opinions. He has
no power over her. She intimidates him. He wishes he
had never set eyes on her. Once or twice this morning
he looked at me as if he could find it in his heart to hate
his old mother. There is no doubt about it---he loves
her, Monsieur George. He loves her, this poor, luck-less,
perfect _homme du monde._''

  The silence lasted for some time and then I heard
a murmur: ``It's a matter of the utmost delicacy
between two beings so sensitive, so proud. It has to be
managed.''

  I found myself suddenly on my feet and saying with
the utmost politeness that I had to beg her permission to
leave her alone as I had an engagement; but she motioned
me simply to sit down---and I sat down again.

  ``I told you I had a request to make,'' she said. ``I
have understood from Mr. Mills that you have been to
the West Indies, that you have some interests there.''

  I was astounded. ``Interests! I certainly have been
there,'' I said, ``but . . .''

  She caught me up. ``Then why not go there again?
I am speaking to you frankly because . . .''

  ``But, Madame, I am engaged in this affair with Do<n~>a
Rita, even if I had any interests elsewhere. I won't tell
you about the importance of my work. I didn't suspect
it but you brought the news of it to me, and so I needn't
point it out to you.''

  And now we were frankly arguing with each other.

  ``But where will it lead you in the end? You have all
your life before you, all your plans, prospects, perhaps
dreams, at any rate your own tastes and all your life-time
before you. And would you sacrifice all this to---the
Pretender? A mere figure for the front page of illustrated
papers.''

  ``I never think of him,'' I said curtly, ``but I suppose
Do<n~>a Rita's feelings, instincts, call it what you like---or
only her chivalrous fidelity to her mistakes------''

  ``Do<n~>a Rita's presence here in this town, her withdrawal
from the possible complications of her life in Paris
has produced an excellent effect on my son. It simplifies
infinite difficulties, I mean moral as well as material.
It's extremely to the advantage of her dignity, of her
future, and of her peace of mind. But I am thinking, of
course, mainly of my son. He is most exacting.''

  I felt extremely sick at heart. ``And so I am to drop
everything and vanish,'' I said, rising from my chair
again. And this time Mrs. Blunt got up, too, with a lofty
and inflexible manner but she didn't dismiss me yet.

  ``Yes,'' she said distinctly. ``All this, my dear Monsieur
George, is such an accident. What have you got to
do here? You look to me like somebody who would find
adventures wherever he went as interesting and perhaps
less dangerous than this one.''

  She slurred over the word dangerous but I picked
it up.

  ``What do you know of its dangers, Madame, may I
ask?'' But she did not condescend to hear.

  ``And then you, too, have your chivalrous feelings,'' she
went on, unswerving, distinct, and tranquil. ``You are
not absurd. But my son is. He would shut her up in a
convent for a time if he could.''

  ``He isn't the only one,'' I muttered.

  ``Indeed!'' she was startled, then lower, ``Yes. That
woman must be the centre of all sorts of passions,'' she
mused audibly. ``But what have you got to do with all
this? It's nothing to you.''

  She waited for me to speak.

  ``Exactly, Madame,'' I said, ``and therefore I don't
see why I should concern myself in all this one way or
another.''

  ``No,'' she assented with a weary air, ``except that you
might ask yourself what is the good of tormenting a man
of noble feelings, however absurd. His Southern blood
makes him very violent sometimes. I fear------'' And
then for the first time during this conversation, for the first
time since I left Do<n~>a Rita the day before, for the first
time I laughed.

  ``Do you mean to hint, Madame, that Southern gentlemen
are dead shots? I am aware of that---from novels.''

  I spoke looking her straight in the face and I made that
exquisite, aristocratic old woman positively blink by my
directness. There was a faint flush on her delicate old
cheeks but she didn't move a muscle of her face. I made
her a most respectful bow and went out of the studio.



			IV

  Through the great arched window of the hall I saw the
hotel brougham waiting at the door. On passing the
door of the front room (it was originally meant for a
drawing-room but a bed for Blunt was put in there) I
banged with my fist on the panel and shouted: ``I am
obliged to go out. Your mother's carriage is at the door.''
I didn't think he was asleep. My view now was that he
was aware beforehand of the subject of the conversation,
and if so I did not wish to appear as if I had slunk away
from him after the interview. But I didn't stop---I
didn't want to see him---and before he could answer I
was already half way up the stairs running noiselessly up
the thick carpet which also covered the floor of the landing. 
Therefore opening the door of my sitting-room quickly I
caught by surprise the person who was in there watching
the street half concealed by the window curtain. It was
a woman. A totally unexpected woman. A perfect
stranger. She came away quickly to meet me. Her face
was veiled and she was dressed in a dark walking costume
and a very simple form of hat. She murmured: ``I had
an idea that Monsieur was in the house,'' raising a gloved
hand to lift her veil. It was Rose and she gave me a
shock. I had never seen her before but with her little
black silk apron and a white cap with ribbons on her
head. This outdoor dress was like a disguise. I asked
anxiously:

  ``What has happened to Madame?''

  ``Nothing. I have a letter,'' she murmured, and I saw
it appear between the fingers of her extended hand, in a
very white envelope which I tore open impatiently. It
consisted of a few lines only. It began abruptly:

  ``If you are gone to sea then I can't forgive you for not
sending the usual word at the last moment. If you are
not gone why don't you come? Why did you leave me
yesterday? You leave me crying---I who haven't cried
for years and years, and you haven't the sense to come
back within the hour, within twenty hours! This conduct
is idiotic''---and a sprawling signature of the four
magic letters at the bottom.

  While I was putting the letter in my pocket the girl
said in an earnest undertone: ``I don't like to leave
Madame by herself for any length of time.''

  ``How long have you been in my room?'' I asked.

  ``The time seemed long. I hope Monsieur won't mind
the liberty. I sat for a little in the hall but then it struck
me I might be seen. In fact, Madame told me not to be
seen if I could help it.''

  ``Why did she tell you that?''

  ``I permitted myself to suggest that to Madame. It
might have given a false impression. Madame is frank
and open like the day but it won't do with everybody. 
There are people who would put a wrong construction on
anything. Madame's sister told me Monsieur was out.''

  ``And you didn't believe her?''

  ``_Non,_ Monsieur. I have lived with Madame's sister
for nearly a week when she first came into this house. 
She wanted me to leave the message, but I said I would
wait a little. Then I sat down in the big porter's chair
in the hall and after a while, everything being very quiet,
I stole up here. I know the disposition of the apartments.
I reckoned Madame's sister would think that
got tired of waiting and let myself out.''

  ``And you have been amusing yourself watching the
street ever since?''

  ``The time seemed long,'' she answered evasively. ``An
empty _coup<e'>_ came to the door about an hour ago and it's
still waiting,'' she added, looking at me inquisitively.
``It seems strange.''

  ``There are some dancing girls staying in the house,''
I said negligently. ``Did you leave Madame alone?''

  ``There's the gardener and his wife in the house.''

  ``Those people keep at the back. Is Madame alone?
That's what I want to know.''

  ``Monsieur forgets that I have been three hours away
but I assure Monsieur that here in this town it's perfectly
safe for Madame to be alone.''

  ``And wouldn't it be anywhere else? It's the first I
hear of it.''

  ``In Paris, in our apartments in the hotel, it's all right,
too; but in the Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn't leave
Madame by herself, not for half an hour.''

  ``What is there in the Pavilion?'' I asked.

  ``It's a sort of feeling I have,'' she murmured reluctantly. . . .''
Oh! There's that _coup<e'>_ going away.''

  She made a movement towards the window but checked
herself. I hadn't moved. The rattle of wheels on the
cobble-stones died out almost at once.

  ``Will Monsieur write an answer?'' Rose suggested
after a short silence.

  ``Hardly worth while,'' I said. ``I will be there very
soon after you. Meantime, please tell Madame from me
that I am not anxious to see any more tears. Tell her
this just like that, you understand. I will take the risk
of not being received.''

  She dropped her eyes, said: ``_Oui,_ Monsieur,'' and at
my suggestion waited, holding the door of the room half
open, till I went downstairs to see the road clear.

  It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house. The black-and-white
hall was empty and everything was perfectly still. 
Blunt himself had no doubt gone away with his mother in
the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls,
Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained,
they might have been all murdering each other in
perfect assurance that the house would not betray them
by indulging in any unseemly murmurs. I emitted a low
whistle which didn't seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere
more than two feet away from my lips, but all the
same Rose came tripping down the stairs at once. With
just a nod to my whisper: ``Take a fiacre,'' she glided out
and I shut the door noiselessly behind her.

  The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the
house on the Prado to me, with her cap and the little black
silk apron on, and with that marked personality of her
own, which had been concealed so perfectly in the dowdy
walking dress, very much to the fore.

  ``I have given Madame the message,'' she said in her
contained voice, swinging the door wide open. Then after
relieving me of my hat and coat she announced me with
the simple words: ``_Voil<a`>_ Monsieur,'' and hurried away. 
Directly I appeared Do<n~>a Rita, away there on the couch,
passed the tips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her
hands up palms outwards on each side of her head, shouted
to me down the whole length of the room: ``The dry season
has set in.'' I glanced at the pink tips of her fingers perfunctorily
and then drew back. She let her hands fall
negligently as if she had no use for them any more and
put on a serious expression.

  ``So it seems,'' I said, sitting down opposite her. ``For
how long, I wonder.''

  ``For years and years. One gets so little encouragement.
First you bolt away from my tears, then you send
an impertinent message, and then when you come at
last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don't
know how to do it. You should sit much nearer the
edge of the chair and hold yourself very stiff, and make
it quite clear that you don't know what to do with your
hands.''

  All this in a fascinating voice with a ripple of badinage
that seemed to play upon the sober surface of her thoughts. 
Then seeing that I did not answer she altered the note a
bit.

  ``_Amigo_ George,'' she said, ``I take the trouble to send
for you and here I am before you, talking to you and you
say nothing.''

  ``What am I to say?''

  ``How can I tell? You might say a thousand things. 
You might, for instance, tell me that you were sorry for
my tears.''

  ``I might also tell you a thousand lies. What do
I know about your tears? I am not a susceptible
idiot. It all depends upon the cause. There are tears
of quiet happiness. Peeling onions also will bring
tears.''

  ``Oh, you are not susceptible,'' she flew out at me.
``But you are an idiot all the same.''

  ``Is it to tell me this that you have written to me to
come?'' I asked with a certain animation.

  ``Yes. And if you had as much sense as the talking
parrot I owned once you would have read between the
lines that all I wanted you here for was to tell you what
I think of you.''

  ``Well, tell me what you think of me.''

  ``I would in a moment if I could be half as impertinent
as you are.''

  ``What unexpected modesty,'' I said.

  ``These, I suppose, are your sea manners.''

  ``I wouldn't put up with half that nonsense from anybody
at sea. Don't you remember you told me yourself
to go away? What was I to do?''

  ``How stupid you are. I don't mean that you pretend. 
You really are. Do you understand what I say? I will
spell it for you. S-t-u-p-i-d. Ah, now I feel better. Oh,
_amigo_ George, my dear fellow-conspirator for the king---
the king. Such a king! _Vive le Roi!_ Come, why don't
you shout _Vive le Roi,_ too?''

  ``I am not your parrot,'' I said.

  ``No, he never sulked. He was a charming, good-mannered
bird, accustomed to the best society, whereas you,
I suppose, are nothing but a heartless vagabond like
myself.''

  ``I daresay you are, but I suppose nobody had the
insolence to tell you that to your face.''

  ``Well, very nearly. It was what it amounted to. I am
not stupid. There is no need to spell out simple words
for me. It just came out. Don Juan struggled desperately
to keep the truth in. It was most pathetic. And
yet he couldn't help himself. He talked very much like
a parrot.''

  ``Of the best society,'' I suggested.

  ``Yes, the most honourable of parrots. I don't like
parrot-talk. It sounds so uncanny. Had I lived in the
Middle Ages I am certain I would have believed that a
talking bird must be possessed by the devil. I am sure
Therese would believe that now. My own sister! She
would cross herself many times and simply quake with
terror.''

  ``But you were not terrified,'' I said. ``May I ask
when that interesting communication took place? ''

  ``Yesterday, just before you blundered in here of all
days in the year. I was sorry for him.''

  ``Why tell me this? I couldn't help noticing it. I
regretted I hadn't my umbrella with me.''

  ``Those unforgiven tears! Oh, you simple soul! Don't
you know that people never cry for anybody but themselves? . . .
_Amigo_ George, tell me---what are we doing
in this world?''

  ``Do you mean all the people, everybody?''

  ``No, only people like you and me. Simple people, in
this world which is eaten up with charlatanism of all
sorts so that even we, the simple, don't know any longer
how to trust each other.''

  ``Don't we? Then why don't you trust him? You are
dying to do so, don't you know? ''

  She dropped her chin on her breast and from under her
straight eyebrows the deep blue eyes remained fixed on
me, impersonally, as if without thought.

  ``What have you been doing since you left me yesterday?''
she asked.

  ``The first thing I remember I abused your sister horribly
this morning.''

  ``And how did she take it?''

  ``Like a warm shower in spring. She drank it all in
and unfolded her petals.''

  ``What poetical expressions he uses! That girl is more
perverted than one would think possible, considering
what she is and whence she came. It's true that I, too,
come from the same spot.''

  ``She is slightly crazy. I am a great favourite with
her. I don't say this to boast.''

  ``It must be very comforting.''

  ``Yes, it has cheered me immensely. Then after a
morning of delightful musings on one thing and another
I went to lunch with a charming lady and spent most of
the afternoon talking with her.''

  Do<n~>a Rita raised her head.

  ``A lady! Women seem such mysterious creatures to
me, I don't know them, Did you abuse her? Did she
---how did you say that?---unfold her petals, too? Was
she really and truly . . . ?''

  ``She is simply perfection in her way and the conversation
was by no means banal. I fancy that if your late
parrot had heard it, he would have fallen off his perch. 
For after all, in that All<e`>gre Pavilion, my dear Rita, you
were but a crowd of glorified _bourgeois._''

  She was beautifully animated now. In her motionless
blue eyes like melted sapphires, around those red lips
that almost without moving could breathe enchanting
sounds into the world, there was a play of light, that
mysterious ripple of gaiety that seemed always to run
and faintly quiver under her skin even in her gravest
moods; just as in her rare moments of gaiety its warmth
and radiance seemed to come to one through infinite sadness,
like the sunlight of our life hiding the invincible
darkness in which the universe must work out its impenetrable
destiny.

  ``Now I think of it! . . . Perhaps that's the reason
I never could feel perfectly serious while they were
demolishing the world about my ears. I fancy now that
I could tell beforehand what each of them was going to
say. They were repeating the same words over and over
again, those great clever men, very much like parrots
who also seem to know what they say. That doesn't
apply to the master of the house, who never talked much.
he sat there mostly silent and looming up three sizes
bigger than any of them.''

  ``The ruler of the aviary,'' I muttered viciously.

  ``It annoys you that I should talk of that tine?'' she
asked in a tender voice. ``Well, I won't, except for once
to say that you must not make a mistake: in that aviary
he was the man. I know because he used to talk to me
afterwards sometimes. Strange! For six years he seemed
to carry all the world and me with it in his hand. . . .''

  ``He dominates you yet,'' I shouted.

  She shook her head innocently as a child would do.

  ``No, no. You brought him into the conversation
yourself. You think of him much more than I do.'' Her
voice drooped sadly to a hopeless note. ``I hardly ever
do. He is not the sort of person to merely flit through
one's mind and so I have no time. Look. I had eleven
letters this morning and there were also five telegrams
before midday, which have tangled up everything. I
am quite frightened.''

  And she explained to me that one of them---the long
one on the top of the pile, on the table over there---
seemed to contain ugly inferences directed at herself in a
menacing way. She begged me to read it and see what I
could make of it.

  I knew enough of the general situation to see at a
glance that she had misunderstood it thoroughly and
even amazingly. I proved it to her very quickly. But
her mistake was so ingenious in its wrongheadedness and
arose so obviously from the distraction of an acute mind,
that I couldn't help looking at her admiringly.

  ``Rita,'' I said, ``you are a marvellous idiot.''

  ``Am I? Imbecile,'' she retorted with an enchanting
smile of relief. ``But perhaps it only seems so to you in
contrast with the lady so perfect in her way. What is
her way? ''

  ``Her way, I should say, lies somewhere between her
sixtieth and seventieth year, and I have walked t<e^>te-<a`>-t<e^>te
with her for some little distance this afternoon.''

  ``Heavens,'' she whispered, thunderstruck. ``And
meantime I had the son here. He arrived about five
minutes after Rose left with that note for you,'' she went
on in a tone of awe. ``As matter of fact, Rose saw him
across the street but she thought she had better go on to
you.''

  ``I am furious with myself for not having guessed
that much,'' I said bitterly. ``I suppose you got him out
of the house about five minutes after you heard I was
coming here. Rose ought to have turned back when she
saw him on his way to cheer your solitude. That girl
is stupid after all, though she has got a certain amount
of low cunning which no doubt is very useful at
times.''

  ``I forbid you to talk like this about Rose. I won't
have it. Rose is not to be abused before me.''

  ``I only mean to say that she failed in this instance to
read your mind, that's all.''

  ``This is, without exception, the most unintelligent
thing you have said ever since I have known you. You
may understand a lot about running contraband and
about the minds of a certain class of people, but as to
Rose's mind let me tell you that in comparison with hers
yours is absolutely infantile, my adventurous friend. It
would be contemptible if it weren't so---what shall I
call it?---babyish. You ought to be slapped and put to
bed.'' There was an extraordinary earnestness in her
tone and when she ceased I listened yet to the seductive
inflexions of her voice, that no matter in what mood she
spoke seemed only fit for tenderness and love. And I
thought suddenly of Azzolati being ordered to take himself
off from her presence for ever, in that voice the very
anger of which seemed to twine itself gently round one's
heart. No wonder the poor wretch could not forget the
scene and couldn't restrain his tears on the plain of Rambouillet.
My moods of resentment against Rita, hot as
they were, had no more duration than a blaze of straw. 
So I only said:

  ``Much _you_ know about the management of children.''

  The corners of her lips stirred quaintly; her animosity,
especially when provoked by a personal attack upon herself,
was always tinged by a sort of wistful humour of the
most disarming kind.

  ``Come, _amigo_ George, let us leave poor Rose alone. 
You had better tell me what you heard from the lips of
the charming old lady. Perfection, isn't she? I have
never seen her in my life, though she says she has seen
me several times. But she has written to me on three
separate occasions and every time I answered her as if I
were writing to a queen. _Amigo_ George, how does one write
to a queen? How should a goatherd that could have been
mistress of a king, how should she write to an old queen
from very far away; from over the sea?''

  ``I will ask you as I have asked the old queen: why do
you tell me all this, Do<n~>a Rita?''

  ``To discover what's in your mind,'' she said, a little
impatiently.

  ``If you don't know that yet!'' I exclaimed under my
breath.

  ``No, not in your mind. Can any one ever tell what is
in a man's mind? But I see you won't tell.''

  ``What's the good? You have written to her before, I
understand. Du you think of continuing the correspondence?''

  ``Who knows?'' she said in a profound tone. ``She is
the only woman that ever wrote to me. I returned her
three letters to her with my last answer, explaining humbly
that I preferred her to burn them herself. And I thought
that would be the end of it. But an occasion may still
arise.''

  ``Oh, if an occasion arises,'' I said, trying to control
my rage, ``you may be able to begin your letter by the
words `_Ch<e`>re Maman._' ''

  The cigarette box, which she had taken up without
removing her eyes from me, flew out of her hand and opening
in mid-air scattered cigarettes for quite a surprising
distance all over the room. I got up at once and wandered
off picking them up industriously. Do<n~>a Rita's voice
behind me said indifferently:

  ``Don't trouble, I will ring for Rose.''

  ``No need,'' I growled, without turning my head, ``I
can find my hat in the hall by myself, after I've finished
picking up . . .''

  ``Bear!''

  I returned with the box and placed it on the divan
near her. She sat cross-legged, leaning back on her
arms, in the blue shimmer of her embroidered robe and
with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about her face
which she raised to mine with an air of resignation.

  ``George, my friend,'' she said, ``we have no
manners.''

  ``You would never have made a career at court, Do<n~>a
Rita,'' I observed. ``You are too impulsive.''

  ``This is not bad manners, that's sheer insolence. 
This has happened to you before. If it happens again,
as I can't be expected to wrestle with a savage and desperate
smuggler single-handed, I will go upstairs and lock
myself in my room till you leave the house. Why did
you say this to me?''

  ``Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart.''

  ``If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear
friend, you had better take it out and give it to the crows. 
No! you said that for the pleasure of appearing terrible. 
And you see you are not terrible at all, you are rather
amusing. Go on, continue to be amusing. Tell me something
of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic
old lady who thinks that all men are equal and entitled
to the pursuit of happiness.''

  ``I hardly remember now. I heard something about
the unworthiness of certain white geese out of stuffy
drawing-rooms. It sounds mad, but the lady knows
exactly what she wants. I also heard your praises sung. 
I sat there like a fool not knowing what to say.''

  ``Why? You might have joined in the singing.''

  ``I didn't feel in the humour, because, don't you see,
I had been incidentally given to understand that I was
an insignificant and superfluous person who had better
get out of the way of serious people.''

  ``Ah, _par exemple_!''

  ``In a sense, you know, it was flattering; but for the
moment it made me feel as if I had been offered a pot
of mustard to sniff.''

  She nodded with an amused air of understanding and
I could see that she was interested. ``Anything more?''
she asked, with a flash of radiant eagerness in all her
person and bending slightly forward towards me.

  ``Oh, it's hardly worth mentioning. It was a sort of
threat wrapped up, I believe, in genuine anxiety as to
what might happen to my youthful insignificance. If
I hadn't been rather on the alert just then I wouldn't
even have perceived the meaning. But really an allusion
to `hot Southern blood' could have only one meaning. 
Of course I laughed at it, but only `_pour l'honneur_' and
to show I understood perfectly. In reality it left me
completely indifferent.''

  Do<n~>a Rita looked very serious for a minute.

  ``Indifferent to the whole conversation?''

  I looked at her angrily.

  ``To the whole . . . You see I got up rather out of
sorts this morning. Unrefreshed, you know. As if tired
of life.''

  The liquid blue in her eyes remained directed at me
without any expression except that of its usual mysterious
immobility, but all her face took on a sad and thoughtful
cast. Then as if she had made up her mind under
the pressure of necessity:

  ``Listen, _amigo,_'' she said, ``I have suffered domination
and it didn't crush me because I have been strong enough
to live with it; I have known caprice, you may call it
folly if you like, and it left me unharmed because I was
great enough not to be captured by anything that wasn't
really worthy of me. My dear, it went down like a house
of cards before my breath. There is something in me
that will not be dazzled by any sort of prestige in this
world, worthy or unworthy. I am telling you this because
you are younger than myself.''

  ``If you want me to say that there is nothing petty or
mean about you, Do<n~>a Rita, then I do say it.''

  Sbe nodded at me with an air of accepting the rendered
justice and went on with the utmost simplicity.

  ``And what is it that is coming to me now with all the
airs of virtue? All the lawful conventions are coming
to me, all the glamours of respectability! And nobody
can say that I have made as much as the slightest little
sign to them. Not so much as lifting my little finger. I
suppose you know that?''

  ``I don't know. I do not doubt your sincerity in anything
you say. I am ready to believe. You are not one
of those who have to work.''

  ``Have to work---what do you mean?''

  ``It's a phrase I have heard. What I meant was that
it isn't necessary for you to make any signs.''

  She seemed to meditate over this for a while.

  ``Don't be so sure of that,'' she said, with a flash of
mischief, which made her voice sound more melancholy
than before. ``I am not so sure myself,'' she continued
with a curious, vanishing, intonation of despair. ``I
don't know the truth about myself because I never had
an opportunity to compare myself to anything in the
world. I have been offered mock adulation, treated with
mock reserve or with mock devotion, I have been fawned
upon with an appalling earnestness of purpose, I can tell
you; but these later honours, my dear, came to me in the
shape of a very loyal and very scrupulous gentleman. 
For he is all that. And as a matter of fact I was touched.''

  ``I know. Even to tears,'' I said provokingly. But
she wasn't provoked, she only shook her head in negation
(which was absurd) and pursued the trend of her spoken
thoughts.

  ``That was yesterday,'' she said. ``And yesterday he
was extremely correct and very full of extreme self-esteem
which expressed itself in the exaggerated delicacy
with which he talked. But I know him in all his moods. 
I have known him even playful. I didn't listen to him. 
I was thinking of something else. Of things that were
neither correct nor playful and that had to be looked at
steadily with all the best that was in me. And that was
why, in the end---I cried---yesterday.''

  ``I saw it yesterday and I had the weakness of being
moved by those tears for a time.''

  ``If you want to make me cry again I warn you you
won't succeed.''

  ``No, I know. He has been here to-day and the dry
season has set in.''

  ``Yes, he has been here. I assure you it was perfectly
unexpected. Yesterday he was railing at the world at
large, at me who certainly have not made it, at himself and
even at his mother. All this rather in parrot language,
in the words of tradition and morality as understood by
the members of that exclusive club to which he belongs. 
And yet when I thought that all this, those poor hackneyed
words, expressed a sincere passion I could have
found in my heart to be sorry for him. But he ended by
telling me that one couldn't believe a single word I said,
or something like that. You were here then, you heard
it yourself.''

  ``And it cut you to the quick,'' I said. ``It made you
depart from your dignity to the point of weeping on any
shoulder that happened to be there. And considering
that it was some more parrot talk after all (men have
been saying that sort of thing to women from the beginning
of the world) this sensibility seems to me childish.''

  ``What perspicacity,'' she observed, with an indulgent,
mocking smile, then changed her tone. ``Therefore he
wasn't expected to-day when he turned up, whereas you,
who were expected, remained subject to the charms of
conversation in that studio. It never occurred to you . . .
did it? No! What had become of your perspicacity?''

  ``I tell you I was weary of life,'' I said in a passion.

  She had another faint smile of a fugitive and unrelated
kind as if she had been thinking of far-off things, then
roused herself to grave animation.

  ``He came in full of smiling playfulness. How well
I know that mood! Such self-command has its beauty;
but it's no great help for a man with such fateful eyes. I
could see he was moved in his correct, restrained way, and
in his own way, too, he tried to move me with something
that would be very simple. He told me that ever since
we became friends, we two, he had not an hour of continuous
sleep, unless perhaps when coming back dead-tired
from outpost duty, and that he longed to get back to it
and yet hadn't the courage to tear himself away from here. 
He was as simple as that. He's a _tr<e`>s galant homme_ of
absolute probity, even with himself. I said to him: The
trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn't love but mistrust that
keeps you in torment. I might have said jealousy, but I
didn't like to use that word. A parrot would have added
that I had given him no right to be jealous. But I am
no parrot. I recognized the rights of his passion which
I could very well see. He is jealous. He is not jealous of
my past or of the future; but he is jealously mistrustful
of me, of what I am, of my very soul. He believes in a
soul in the same way Therese does, as something that can
be touched with grace or go to perdition; and he doesn't
want to be damned with me before his own judgment
seat. He is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have
my own Basque peasant soul and don't want to think that
every time he goes away from my feet---yes, _mon cher,_ on
this carpet, look for the marks of scorching---that he
goes away feeling tempted to brush the dust off his moral
sleeve. That! Never!''

  With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of
the box, held it in her fingers for a moment, then dropped
it unconsciously.

  ``And then, I don't love him,'' she uttered slowly as if
speaking to herself and at the same time watching the
very quality of that thought. ``I never did. At first he
fascinated me with his fatal aspect and his cold society
smiles. But I have looked into those eyes too often. 
There are too many disdains in this aristocratic republican
without a home. His fate may be cruel, but it will
always be commonplace. While he sat there trying in a
worldly tone to explain to me the problems, the scruples,
of his suffering honour, I could see right into his heart
and I was sorry for him. I was sorry enough for him to
feel that if he had suddenly taken me by the throat and
strangled me slowly, _avec d<e'>lices,_ I could forgive him
while I choked. How correct he was! But bitterness
against me peeped out of every second phrase. At last
I raised my hand and said to him, `Enough.' I believe
he was shocked by my plebeian abruptness but he was too
polite to show it. His conventions will always stand in
the way of his nature. I told him that everything that
had been said and done during the last seven or eight
months was inexplicable unless on the assumption that he
was in love with me,---and yet in everything there was
an implication that he, couldn't forgive me my very existence.
I did ask him whether he didn't think that it was
absurd on his part . . . ''

  ``Didn't you say that it was exquisitely absurd?'' I
asked.

  ``Exquisitely! . . .'' Do<n~>a Rita was surprised at
my question. ``No. Why should I say that?''

  ``It would have reconciled him to your abruptness. It's
their family expression. It would have cone with a
familiar sound and would have been less offensive.''

  ``Offensive,'' Do<n~>a Rita repeated earnestly. ``I don't
think he was offended; he suffered in another way, but I
didn't care for that. It was I that had become offended
in the end, without spite, you understand, but past bearing.
I didn't spare him. I told him plainly that to want
a woman formed in mind and body, mistress of herself,
free in her choice, independent in her thoughts; to love
her apparently for what she is and at the same time to
demand from her the candour and the innocence that could
be only a shocking pretence; to know her such as life had
made her and at the same time to despise her secretly for
every touch with which her life had fashioned her---that
was neither generous nor high minded; it was positively
frantic. He got up and went away to lean against the
mantelpiece, there, on his elbow and with his head in
his hand. You have no idea of the charm and the distinction
of his pose. I couldn't help admiring him:
the expression, the grace, the fatal suggestion of his
immobility. Oh, yes, I am sensible to <ae>sthetic impressions,
I have been educated to believe that there
is a soul in them.''

  With that enigmatic, under the eyebrows glance fixed
on me she laughed her deep contralto laugh without mirth
but also without irony, and profoundly moving by the
were purity of the sound.

  ``I suspect he was never so disgusted and appalled in
his life. His self-command is the most admirable worldly
thing I have ever seen. What made it beautiful was that
one could feel in it a tragic suggestion as in a great work of
art.''

  She paused with an inscrutable smile that a great
painter might have put on the face of some symbolic
figure for the speculation and wonder of many generations.
I said:

  ``I always thought that love for you could work great
wonders. And now I am certain.''

  ``Are you trying to be ironic?'' she said sadly and very
much as a child might have spoken.

  ``I don't know,'' I answered in a tone of the same simplicity.
``I find it very difficult to be generous.''

  ``I, too,'' she said with a sort of funny eagerness. ``I
didn't treat him very generously. Only I didn't say
much more. I found I didn't care what I said---and it
would have been like throwing insults at a beautiful
composition. He was well inspired not to move. It has
spared him some disagreeable truths and perhaps I would
even have said more than the truth. I am not fair. 
I am no more fair than other people. I would have been
harsh. My very admiration was making me more angry. 
It's ridiculous to say of a man got up in correct tailor
clothes, but there was a funereal grace in his attitude so
that he might have been reproduced in marble on a monument
to some woman in one of those atrocious Campo
Santos: the bourgeois conception of an aristocratic
mourning lover. When I came to that conclusion I
became glad that I was angry or else I would have laughed
right out before him.''

  ``I have heard a Roman say once, a woman of the
people---do you hear me, Do<n~>a Rita?---therefore deserving
your attention, that one should never laugh at love.''

  ``My dear,'' she said gently, ``I have been taught to
laugh at most things by a man who never laughed himself
but it's true that he never spoke of love to me, love as a
subject that is. So perhaps . . . But why?''

  ``Because (but maybe that old woman was crazy),
because, she said, there was death in the mockery of love.''

  Do<n~>a Rita moved slightly her beautiful shoulders and
went on:

  ``I am glad, then, I didn't laugh. And I am also glad
I said nothing more. I was feeling so little generous that
if I had known something then of his mother's allusion to
`white geese' I would have advised him to get one of
them and lead it away on a beautiful blue ribbon. Mrs.
Blunt was wrong, you know, to be so scornful. A white
goose is exactly what her son wants. But look how badly
the world is arranged. Such white birds cannot be got
for nothing and he has not enough money even to buy a
ribbon. Who knows! Maybe it was this which gave
that tragic quality to his pose by the mantelpiece over
there. Yes, that was it. Though no doubt I didn't see
it then. As he didn't offer to move after I had done speaking
I became quite unaffectedly sorry and advised him
very gently to dismiss me from his mind definitely. He
moved forward then and said to me in his usual voice and
with his usual smile that it would have been excellent
advice but unfortunately I was one of those women who
can't be dismissed at will. And as I shook my head he
insisted rather darkly: `Oh, yes, Do<n~>a Rita, it is so. 
Cherish no illusions about that fact.' It sounded so
threatening that in my surprise I didn't even acknowledge
his parting bow. He went out of that false situation like
a wounded man retreating after a fight. No, I have
nothing to reproach myself with. I did nothing. I led
him into nothing. Whatever illusions have passed through
my head I kept my distance, and he was so loyal to
what he seemed to think the redeeming proprieties of
the situation that he has gone from me for good without
so much as kissing the tips of my fingers. He must have
felt like a man who had betrayed himself for nothing. 
It's horrible. It's the fault of that enormous fortune of
mine, and I wish with all my heart that I could give it to
him; for he couldn't help his hatred of the thing that is:
and as to his love, which is just as real, well---could I
have rushed away from him to shut myself up in a convent?
Could I? After all I have a right to my share of
daylight.



			V

  I took my eyes from her face and became aware that
dusk was beginning to steal into the room. How strange
it seemed. Except for the glazed rotunda part its long
walls, divided into narrow panels separated by an order
of flat pilasters, presented, depicted on a black background
and in vivid colours, slender women with butterfly
wings and lean youths with narrow birds' wings. The
effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita and I had
often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enriched shopkeeper.
But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of
grace; but at that moment these figures appeared to me
weird and intrusive and strangely alive in their attenuated
grace of unearthly beings concealing a power to see and
hear.

  Without words, without gestures, Do<n~>a Rita was
heard again. ``It may have been as near coming to pass
as this.'' She showed me the breadth of her little finger
nail. ``Yes, as near as that. Why? How? Just like
that, for nothing. Because it had come up. Because a
wild notion had entered a practical old woman's head. 
Yes. And the best of it is that I have nothing to complain
of. Had I surrendered I would have been perfectly safe
with these two. It is they or rather he who couldn't trust
me, or rather that something which I express, which I
stand for. Mills would never tell me what it was. Perhaps
he didn't know exactly himself. He said it was something
like genius. My genius! Oh, I am not conscious of it,
believe me, I am not conscious of it. But if I were I
wouldn't pluck it out and cast it away. I am ashamed of
nothing, of nothing! Don't be stupid enough to think
that I have the slightest regret. There is no regret. 
First of all because I am I---and then because . . . My
dear, believe me, I have had a horrible time of it myself
lately.''

  This seemed to be the last word. Outwardly quiet, all
the time, it was only then that she became composed
enough to light an enormous cigarette of the same pattern
as those made specially for the king---_por el Rey!_ After
a time, tipping the ash into the bowl on her left hand,
she asked me in a friendly, almost tender, tone

  ``What are you thinking of, _amigo?_''

  ``I was thinking of your immense generosity. You
want to give a crown to one man, a fortune to another. 
That is very fine. But I suppose there is a limit to your
generosity somewhere.''

  ``I don't see why there should be any limit---to fine
intentions! Yes, one would like to pay ransom and be
done with it all.''

  ``That's the feeling of a captive; and yet somehow
I can't think of you as ever having been anybody's
captive.''

  ``You do display some wonderful insight sometimes.
My dear, I begin to suspect that men are rather conceited
about their powers. They think they dominate
us. Even exceptional men will think that; men too great
for mere vanity, men like Henry All<e`>gre for instance,
who by his consistent and serene detachment was certainly
fit to dominate all sorts of people. Yet for the most
part they can only do it because women choose more or
less consciously to let them do so. Henry All<e`>gre, if any
man, might have been certain of his own power; and yet,
look: I was a chit of a girl, I was sitting with a book
where I had no business to be, in his own garden, when
he suddenly came upon me, an ignorant girl of seventeen,
a most uninviting creature with a tousled head, in an
old black frock and shabby boots. I could have run
away. I was perfectly capable of it. But I stayed looking
up at him and---in the end it was =HE= who went away and
it was I who stayed.''

  ``Consciously?'' I murmured.

  ``Consciously? You may just as well ask my shadow
that lay so still by me on the young grass in that morning
sunshine. I never knew before how still I could keep.
It wasn't the stillness of terror. I remained, knowing
perfectly well that if I ran he was not the man to run
after me. I remember perfectly his deep-toned, politely
indifferent `_Restez donc._' He was mistaken. Already
then I hadn't the slightest intention to move. And if
you ask me again how far conscious all this was the
nearest answer I can make you is this: that I remained
on purpose, but I didn't know for what purpose I remained.
Really, that couldn't be expected. . . . Why
do you sigh like this? Would you have preferred me to
be idiotically innocent or abominably wise?''

  ``These are not the questions that trouble me,'' I said.
``If I sighed it is because I am weary.''

  ``And getting stiff, too, I should say, in this Pompeiian
armchair. You had better get out of it and sit on this
couch as you always used to do. That, at any rate, is not
Pompeiian. You have been growing of late extremely
formal, I don't know why. If it is a pose then for goodness'
sake drop it. Are you going to model yourself on
Captain Blunt? You couldn't, you know. You are too
young.''

  ``I don't want to model myself on anybody,'' I said.
``And anyway Blunt is too romantic; and, moreover, he
has been and is yet in love with you---a thing that requires
some style, an attitude, something of which I am altogether
incapable.''

  ``You know it isn't so stupid, this what you have just
said. Yes, there is something in this.''

  ``I am not stupid,'' I protested, without much heat.

  ``Oh, yes, you are. You don't know the world enough
to judge. You don't know how wise men can be. Owls are
nothing to them. Why do you try to look like an owl?
There are thousands and thousands of them waiting for
me outside the door: the staring, hissing beasts. You
don't know what a relief of mental ease and intimacy
you have been to me in the frankness of gestures and
speeches and thoughts, sane or insane, that we have been
throwing at each other. I have known nothing of this in
my life but with you. There had always been some fear,
some constraint, lurking in the background behind everybody,
everybody except you, my friend.''

  ``An unmannerly, Arcadian state of affairs. I am glad
you like it. Perhaps it's because you were intelligent
enough to perceive that I was not in love with you in
any sort of style.''

  ``No, you were always your own self, unwise and reckless
and with something in it kindred to mine, if I may
say so without offence.''

  ``You may say anything without offence. But has it
never occurred to your sagacity that I just, simply, loved
you?''

  ``Just---simply,'' she repeated in a wistful tone.

  ``You didn't want to trouble your head about it, is
that it?''

  ``My poor head. From your tone one might think
you yearned to cut it off. No, my dear, I have made up
my mind not to lose my head.''

  ``You would be astonished to know how little I care
for your mind.''

  ``Would I? Come and sit on the couch all the same,''
she said after a moment of hesitation. Then, as I did not
move at once, she added with indifference: ``You may sit
as far away as you like, it's big enough, goodness knows.''

  The light was ebbing slowly out of the rotunda and to
my bodily eyes she was beginning to grow shadowy. I
sat down on the couch and for a long time no word passed
between us. We made no movement. We did not even
turn towards each other. All I was conscious of was the
softness of the seat which seemed somehow to cause a
relaxation of my stern mood, I won't say against my will
but without any will on my part. Another thing I was
conscious of, strangely enough, was the enormous brass
bowl for cigarette ends. Quietly, with the least possible
action, Do<n~>a Rita moved it to the other side of her motionless
person, Slowly, the fantastic women with butterflies'
wings and the slender-limbed youths with the gorgeous
pinions on their shoulders were vanishing into their black
backgrounds with an effect of silent discretion, leaving
us to ourselves.

  I felt suddenly extremely exhausted, absolutely overcome
with fatigue since I had moved; as if to sit on that
Pompeiian chair had been a task almost beyond human
strength, a sort of labour that must end in collapse. I
fought against it for a moment and then my resistance
gave way. Not all at once but as if yielding to an
irresistible pressure (for I was not conscious of any irresistible
attraction) I found myself with my head resting,
with a weight I felt must be crushing, on Do<n~>a Rita's
shoulder which yet did not give way, did not flinch at all. 
A faint scent of violets filled the tragic emptiness of my
head and it seemed impossible to me that I should not
cry from sheer weakness. But I remained dry-eyed. I
only felt myself slipping lower and lower and I caught
her round the waist clinging to her not from any intention
but purely by instinct. All that time she hadn't
stirred. There was only the slight movement of her
breathing that showed her to be alive; and with closed
eyes I imagined her to be lost in thought, removed by
an incredible meditation while I clung to her, to an
immense distance from the earth. The distance must
have been immense because the silence was so perfect,
the feeling as if of eternal stillness. I had a distinct impression
of being in contact with an infinity that had the
slightest possible rise and fall, was pervaded by a warm,
delicate scent of violets and through which came a hand
from somewhere to rest lightly on my head. Presently
my ear caught the faint and regular pulsation of her
heart, firm and quick, infinitely touching in its persistent
mystery, disclosing itself into my very ear---and my
felicity became complete.

  It was a dreamlike state combined with a dreamlike
sense of insecurity. Then in that warm and scented infinity,
or eternity, in which I rested lost in bliss but ready
for any catastrophe, I heard the distant, hardly audible,
and fit to strike terror into the heart, ringing of a bell. 
At this sound the greatness of spaces departed. I felt the
world close about me; the world of darkened walls, of
very deep grey dusk against the panes, and I asked in a
pained voice:

  ``Why did you ring, Rita?''

  There was a bell rope within reach of her hand. I had
not felt her move, but she said very low:

  ``I rang for the lights.''

  ``You didn't want the lights.''

  ``It was time,'' she whispered secretly.

  Somewhere within the house a door slammed. I got
away from her feeling small and weak as if the best part
of me had been torn away and irretrievably lost. Rose
must have been somewhere near the door.

  ``It's abominable,'' I murmured to the still, idol-like
shadow on the couch.

  The answer was a hurried, nervous whisper: ``I tell
you it was time. I rang because I had no strength to
push you away.''

  I suffered a moment of giddiness before the door opened,
light streamed in, and Rose entered, preceding a man in
a green baize apron whom I had never seen, carrying
on an enormous tray three Argand lamps fitted into vases
of Pompeiian form. Rose distributed them over the
room. In the flood of soft light the winged youths and
the butterfly women reappeared on the panels, affected,
gorgeous, callously unconscious of anything having happened
during their absence. Rose attended to the lamp
on the nearest mantelpiece, then turned about and asked
in a confident undertone.

  ``_Monsieur d<i^>ne?_''

  I had lost myself with my elbows on my knees and my
head in my hands, but I heard the words distinctly. I
heard also the silence which ensued. I sat up and took
the responsibility of the answer on myself.

  ``Impossible. I am going to sea this evening.''

  This was perfectly true only I had totally forgotten it
till then. For the last two days my being was no longer
composed of memories but exclusively of sensations of
the most absorbing, disturbing, exhausting nature. I was
like a man who has been buffeted by the sea or by a mob till
he loses all hold on the world in the misery of his helplessness.
But now I was recovering. And naturally the first
thing I remembered was the fact that I was going to sea.

  ``You have heard, Rose,'' Do<n~>a Rita said at last with
some impatience.

  The girl waited a moment longer before she said:

  ``Oh, yes! There is a man waiting for Monsieur in the
hall. A seaman.''

  It could be no one but Dominic. It dawned upon me
that since the evening of our return I had not been near
him or the ship, which was completely unusual, unheard
of, and well calculated to startle Dominic.

  ``I have seen him before,'' continued Rose, ``and as he
told me he has been pursuing Monsieur all the afternoon
and didn't like to go away without seeing Monsieur for a
moment, I proposed to him to wait in the hall till Monsieur
was at liberty.''

  I said: ``Very well,'' and with a sudden resumption of
her extremely busy, not-a-moment-to-lose manner Rose
departed from the room. I lingered in an imaginary
world full of tender light, of unheard-of colours, with a
mad riot of flowers and an inconceivable happiness under
the sky arched above its yawning precipices, while a
feeling of awe enveloped me like its own proper atmosphere.
But everything vanished at the sound of Do<n~>a
Rita's loud whisper full of boundless dismay, such as to
make one's hair stir on one's head.

  ``_Mon Dieu!_ And what is going to happen
now?''

  She got down from the couch and walked to a window.
When the lights had been brought into the room all the
panes had turned inky black; for the night had come and
the garden was full of tall bushes and trees screening off
the gas lamps of the main alley of the Prado. Whatever
the question meant she was not likely to see an answer
to it outside. But her whisper had offended me, had
hurt something infinitely deep, infinitely subtle and infinitely
clear-eyed in my nature. I said after her from
the couch on which I had remained, ``Don't lose your
composure. You will always have some sort of bell at
hand.''

  I saw her shrug her uncovered shoulders impatiently.
Her forehead was against the very blackness of the
panes; pulled upward from the beautiful, strong nape of
her neck, the twisted mass of her tawny hair was held
high upon her head by the arrow of gold.

  ``You set up for being unforgiving,'' she said without
anger.

  I sprang to my feet while she turned about and came
towards me bravely, with a wistful smile on her bold,
adolescent face.

  ``It seems to me,'' she went on in a voice like a wave of
love itself, ``that one should try to understand before one
sets up for being unforgiving. Forgiveness is a very fine
word. It is a fine invocation.''

  ``There are other fine words in the language such as
fascination, fidelity, also frivolity; and as for invocations
there are plenty of them, too; for instance: alas, heaven
help me.''

  We stood very close together, her narrow eyes were as
enigmatic as ever, but that face, which, like some ideal
conception of art, was incapable of anything like untruth
and grimace, expressed by some mysterious means such
a depth of infinite patience that I felt profoundly ashamed
of myself.

  ``This thing is beyond words altogether,'' I said.
``Beyond forgiveness, beyond forgetting, beyond anger or
jealousy. . . . There is nothing between us two that
could make us act together.''

  ``Then we must fall back perhaps on something within
us, that---you admit it?---we have in common.''

  ``Don't be childish,'' I said. ``You give one with a
perpetual and intense freshness feelings and sensations
that are as old as the world itself, and you imagine that
your enchantment can be broken off anywhere, at any
time! But it can't be broken. And forgetfulness, like
everything else, can only come from you. It's an impossible
situation to stand up against.''

  She listened with slightly parted lips as if to catch
some further resonances.

  ``There is a sort of generous ardour about you,'' she
said, ``which I don't really understand. No, I don't
know it. Believe me, it is not of myself I am thinking.
And you---you are going out to-night to make another
landing.''

  ``Yes, it is a fact that before many hours I will be sailing
away from you to try my luck once more.''

  ``Your wonderful luck,'' she breathed out.

  ``Oh, yes, I am wonderfully lucky. Unless the luck
really is yours---in having found somebody like me, who
cares at the same time so much and so little for what you
have at heart.''

  ``What time will you be leaving the harbour?'' she
asked.

  ``Some time between midnight and daybreak. Our
men may be a little late in joining, but certainly we will
be gone before the first streak of light.''

  ``What freedom!'' she murmured enviously. ``It's
something I shall never know. . . .''

  ``Freedom!'' I protested. ``I am a slave to my word.
There will be a string of carts and mules on a certain
part of the coast, and a most ruffianly lot of men, men
you understand, men with wives and children and sweethearts,
who from the very moment they start on a trip
risk a bullet in the head at any moment, but who have a
perfect conviction that I will never fail them. That's
my freedom. I wonder what they would think if they
knew of your existence.''

  ``I don't exist,'' she said.

  ``That's easy to say. But I will go as if you didn't
exist---yet only because you do exist. You exist in me.
I don't know where I end and you begin. You have
got into my heart and into my veins and into my brain.''

  ``Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust,''
she said in a tone of timid entreaty.

  ``Heroically,'' I suggested with the sarcasm of despair.

  ``Well, yes, heroically,'' she said; and there passed between
us dim smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching
imbecility on earth. We were standing by then
in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on a
black background, with its multitude of winged figures
with pale limbs, with hair like halos or flames, all
strangely tense in their strained, decorative attitudes.
Do<n~>a Rita made a step towards me, and as I attempted
to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck. I
felt their strength drawing me towards her and by a
sort of blind and desperate effort I resisted. And all the
time she was repeating with nervous insistence:

  ``But it is true that you will go. You will surely. Not
because of those people but because of me. You will go
away because you feel you must.''

  With every word urging me to get away, her clasp
tightened, she hugged my head closer to her breast. I
submitted, knowing well that I could free myself by one
more effort which it was in my power to make. But
before I made it, in a sort of desperation, I pressed a long
kiss into the hollow of her throat. And lo---there was
no need for any effort. With a stifled cry of surprise her
arms fell off me as if she had been shot. I must have
been giddy, and perhaps we both were giddy, but the next
thing I knew there was a good foot of space between us
in the peaceful glow of the ground-glass globes, in the
everlasting stillness of the winged figures. Something in
the quality of her exclamation, something utterly unexpected,
something I had never heard before, and also the
way she was looking at me with a sort of incredulous, concentrated
attention, disconcerted me exceedingly. I knew
perfectly well what I had done and yet I felt that I didn't
understand what had happened. I became suddenly
abashed and I muttered that I had better go and dismiss
that poor Dominic. She made no answer, gave no sign.
She stood there lost in a vision---or was it a sensation?---
of the most absorbing kind. I hurried out into the hall,
shamefaced, as if I were making my escape while she
wasn't looking. And yet I felt her looking fixedly at
me, with a sort of stupefaction on her features---in her
whole attitude---as though she had never even heard of
such a thing as a kiss in her life.

  A dim lamp (of Pompeiian form) hanging on a long
chain left the hall practically dark. Dominic, advancing
towards me from a distant corner, was but a little more
opaque shadow than the others. He had expected me on
board every moment till about three o'clock, but as I
didn't turn up and gave no sign of life in any other way
he started on his hunt. He sought news of me from the
_gar<c,>ons_ at the various caf<e'>s, from the _cochers de fiacre_ in
front of the Exchange, from the tobacconist lady at the
counter of the fashionable _D<e'>bit de Tabac,_ from the old
man who sold papers outside the _cercle,_ and from the flower-girl
at the door of the fashionable restaurant where I
had my table. That young woman, whose business name
was Irma, had come on duty about mid-day. She said
to Dominic: ``I think I've seen all his friends this
morning but I haven't seen him for a week. What has
become of him?''

  ``That's exactly what I want to know,'' Dominic replied
in a fury and then went back to the harbour on the chance
that I might have called either on board or at Madame
L<e'>onore's caf<e'>.

  I expressed to him my surprise that he should fuss
about me like an old hen over a chick. It wasn't like
him at all. And he said that ``_en effet_'' it was Madame
L<e'>onore who wouldn't give him any peace He hoped I
wouldn't mind, it was best to humour women in little
things; and so he started off again, made straight for the
street of the Consuls, was told there that I wasn't at
home but the woman of the house looked so funny that he
didn't know what to make of it. Therefore, after some
hesitation, he took the liberty to inquire at this house, too,
and being told that I couldn't be disturbed, had made up
his mind not to go on board without actually setting his
eyes on me and hearing from my own lips that nothing
was changed as to sailing orders.

  ``There is nothing changed, Dominic,'' I said.

  ``No change of any sort?'' he insisted, looking very
sombre and speaking gloomily from under his black moustaches
in the dim glow of the alabaster lamp hanging
above his head. He peered at me in an extraordinary
manner as if he wanted to make sure that I had all my
limbs about me. I asked him to call for my bag at the
other house, on his way to the harbour, and he departed
reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically
that ever since she saw that American cavalier Madame
L<e'>onore was not easy in her mind about me.

  As I stood alone in the hall, without a sound of any
sort, Rose appeared before me.

  ``Monsieur will dine after all,'' she whispered calmly.

  ``My good girl, I am going to sea to-night.''

  ``What am I going to do with Madame?'' she murmured
to herself. ``She will insist on returning to Paris.''

  ``Oh, have you heard of it?''

  ``I never get more than two hours' notice,'' she said.
``But I know how it will be,'' her voice lost its calmness.
``I can look after Madame up to a certain point but I
cannot be altogether responsible. There is a dangerous
person who is everlastingly trying to see Madame alone.
I have managed to keep him off several times but there
is a beastly old journalist who is encouraging him in his
attempts, and I daren't even speak to Madame about
it.''

  ``What sort of person do you mean?''

  ``Why, a man,'' she said scornfully.

  I snatched up my coat and hat.

  ``Aren't there dozens of them?''

  ``Oh! But this one is dangerous. Madame must have
given him a hold on her in some way. I ought not to
talk like this about Madame and I wouldn't to anybody
but Monsieur. I am always on the watch, but what is
a poor girl to do? . . . Isn't Monsieur going back to
Madame?''

  ``No, I am not going back. Not this time.'' A mist
seemed to fall before my eyes. I could hardly see the
girl standing by the closed door of the Pompeiian room
with extended hand, as if turned to stone. But my voice
was firm enough. ``Not this time,'' I repeated, and
became aware of the great noise of the wind amongst the
trees, with the lashing of a rain squall against the door.
Perhaps some other time,'' I added.

  I heard her say twice to herself: ``_Mon Dieu! Mon
Dieu!_'' and then a dismayed: ``What can Monsieur
expect me to do?'' But I had to appear insensible to her
distress and that not altogether because, in fact, I had no
option but to go away. I remember also a distinct wilfulness
in my attitude and something half-contemptuous in
my words as I laid my hand on the knob of the front door.

  ``You will tell Madame that I am gone. It will please
her. Tell her that I am gone---heroically.''

  Rose had come up close to me. She met my words by
a despairing outward movement of her hands as though
she were giving everything up.

  ``I see it clearly now that Madame has no friends,'' she
declared with such a force of restrained bitterness that it
nearly made me pause. But the very obscurity of actuating
motives drove me on and I stepped out through
the doorway muttering: ``Everything is as Madame
wishes it.''

  She shot at me a swift ``You should resist,'' of an extraordinary
intensity, but I strode on down the path.
Then Rose's schooled temper gave way at last and I
heard her angry voice screaming after me furiously through
the wind and rain: ``No! Madame has no friends.
Not one!''

		PART FIVE

		I


  That night I didn't get on board till just before midnight
and Dominic could not conceal his relief at having me
safely there. Why he should have been so uneasy it was
impossible to say but at the time I had a sort of impression
that my inner destruction (it was nothing less) had affected
my appearance, that my doom was as it were written on
my face. I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a
living testimony to the vanity of all things. My very
thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of dead leaves. But
we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of the
time Dominic displayed an unwonted jocularity of a dry
and biting kind with which, he maintained, he had been
infected by no other person than myself. As, with all his
force of character, he was very responsive to the moods of
those he liked I have no doubt he spoke the truth. But
I know nothing about it. The observer, more or less
alert, whom each of us carries in his own consciousness,
failed me altogether, had turned away his face in sheer
horror, or else had fainted from the strain. And thus I
had to live alone, unobserved even by myself.

  But the trip had been successful. We re-entered the
harbour very quietly as usual and when our craft had been
moored unostentatiously amongst the plebeian stone-carriers,
Dominic, whose grim joviality had subsided in
the last twenty-four hours of our homeward run, abandoned
me to myself as though indeed I had been a doomed
man. He only stuck his head for a moment into our little
cuddy where I was changing my clothes and being told in
answer to his question that I had no special orders to give
went ashore without waiting for me.

  Generally we used to step on the quay together and I
never failed to enter for a moment Madame L<e'>onore's caf<e'>.
But this time when I got on the quay Dominic was nowhere
to be seen. What was it? Abandonment---discretion---
or had he quarrelled with his L<e'>onore before leaving
on the trip?

  My way led me past the caf<e'> and through the glass
panes I saw that he was already there. On the other side
of the little marble table Madame L<e'>onore, leaning with
mature grace on her elbow, was listening to him absorbed.
Then I passed on and---what would you have!---I
ended by making my way into the street of the Consuls.
I had nowhere else to go. There were my things in the
apartment on the first floor. I couldn't bear the thought
of meeting anybody I knew.

  The feeble gas flame in the hall was still there, on duty,
as though it had never been turned off since I last crossed
the hall at half-past eleven in the evening to go to the
harbour. The small flame had watched me letting myself
out; and now, exactly of the same size, the poor little
tongue of light (there was something wrong with that
burner) watched me letting myself in, as indeed it had
done many times before. Generally the impression was
that of entering an untenanted house, but this time before
I could reach the foot of the stairs Therese glided out of
the passage leading into the studio. After the usual
exclamations she assured me that everything was ready
for me upstairs, had been for days, and offered to get me
something to eat at once. I accepted and said I would be
down in the studio in half an hour. I found her there by
the side of the laid table ready for conversation. She
began by telling me---the dear, poor young Monsieur---
in a sort of plaintive chant, that there were no letters for
me, no letters of any kind, no letters from anybody.
Glances of absolutely terrifying tenderness mingled with
flashes of cunning swept over me from head to foot while
I tried to eat.

  ``Are you giving me Captain Blunt's wine to drink?''
I asked, noting the straw-coloured liquid in my glass.

  She screwed up her mouth as if she had a twinge of
toothache and assured me that the wine belonged to the
house. I would have to pay her for it. As far as personal
feelings go, Blunt, who addressed her always with polite
seriousness, was not a favourite with her. The ``charming,
brave Monsieur'' was now fighting for the King and
religion against the impious Liberals. He went away
the very morning after I had left and, oh! she remembered,
he had asked her before going away whether I was still in
the house. Wanted probably to say good-bye to me, shake
my hand, the dear, polite Monsieur.

  I let her run on in dread expectation of what she would
say next but she stuck to the subject of Blunt for some
time longer. He had written to her once about some of
his things which he wanted her to send to Paris to his
mother's address; but she was going to do nothing of the
kind. She announced this with a pious smile; and in
answer to my questions I discovered that it was a stratagem
to make Captain Blunt return to the house.

  ``You will get yourself into trouble with the police,
Mademoiselle Therese, if you go on like that,'' I said.
But she was as obstinate as a mule and assured me with
the utmost confidence that many people would be ready
to defend a poor honest girl. There was something behind
this attitude which I could not fathom. Suddenly she
fetched a deep sigh.

  ``Our Rita, too, will end by coming to her sister.''

  The name for which I had been waiting deprived me of
speech for the moment. The poor mad sinner had rushed
off to some of her wickednesses in Paris. Did I know?
No? How could she tell whether I did know or not?
Well! I had hardly left the house, so to speak, when Rita
was down with her maid behaving as if the house did
really still belong to her.

  ``What time was it?'' I managed to ask. And with the
words my life itself was being forced out through my lips.
But Therese, not noticing anything strange about me,
said it was something like half-past seven in the morning.
The ``poor sinner'' was all in black as if she were going to
church (except for her expression, which was enough to
shock any honest person), and after ordering her with
frightful menaces not to let anybody know she was in the
house she rushed upstairs and locked herself up in my
bedroom, while ``that French creature'' (whom she seemed
to love more than her own sister) went into my salon
and hid herself behind the window curtain.

  I had recovered sufficiently to ask in a quiet natural
voice whether Do<n~>a Rita and Captain Blunt had seen
each other. Apparently they had not seen each other.
The polite captain had looked so stern while packing up
his kit that Therese dared not speak to him at all. And
he was in a hurry, too. He had to see his dear mother off
to Paris before his own departure. Very stern. But he
shook her hand with a very nice bow.

  Therese elevated her right hand for me to see. It was
broad and short with blunt fingers, as usual. The pressure
of Captain Blunt's handshake had not altered its
unlovely shape.

  ``What was the good of telling him that our Rita was
here?'' went on Therese. ``I would have been ashamed
of her coming here and behaving as if the house belonged
to her! I had already said some prayers at his intention
at the half-past six mass, the brave gentleman. That
maid of my sister Rita was upstairs watching him drive
away with her evil eyes, but I made a sign of the cross
after the fiacre, and then I went upstairs and banged at
your door, my dear kind young Monsieur, and shouted to
Rita that she had no right to lock herself in any of my
_locataires'_ rooms. At last she opened it---and what do
you think? All her hair was loose over her shoulders.
I suppose it all came down when she flung her hat on your
bed. I noticed when she arrived that her hair wasn't done
properly. She used your brushes to do it up again in
front of your glass.''

  ``Wait a moment,'' I said, and jumped up, upsetting my
wine to run upstairs as fast as I could. I lighted the gas,
all the three jets in the middle of the room, the jet by the
bedside and two others flanking the dressing-table. I
had been struck by the wild hope of finding a trace of
Rita's passage, a sign or something. I pulled out all the
drawers violently, thinking that perhaps she had hidden
there a scrap of paper, a note. It was perfectly mad. Of
course there was no chance of that. Therese would have
seen to it. I picked up one after another all the various
objects on the dressing-table. On laying my hands on
the brushes I had a profound emotion, and with misty
eyes I examined them meticulously with the new hope of
finding one of Rita's tawny hairs entangled amongst the
bristles by a miraculous chance. But Therese would have
done away with that chance, too. There was nothing to
be seen, though I held them up to the light with a beating
heart. It was written that not even _that_ trace of her
passage on the earth should remain with me; not to help
but, as it were, to soothe the memory. Then I lighted a
cigarette and came downstairs slowly. My unhappiness
became dulled, as the grief of those who mourn for the
dead gets dulled in the overwhelming sensation that
everything is over, that a part of themselves is lost beyond
recall taking with it all the savour of life.

  I discovered Therese still on the very same spot of the
floor, her hands folded over each other and facing my
empty chair before which the spilled wine had soaked a
large portion of the table-cloth. She hadn't moved at
all. She hadn't even picked up the overturned glass.
But directly I appeared she began to speak in an ingratiating
voice.

  ``If you have missed anything of yours upstairs, my
dear young Monsieur, you mustn't say it's me. You
don't know what our Rita is.''

  ``I wish to goodness,'' I said, ``that she had taken something.''

  And again I became inordinately agitated as though it
were my absolute fate to be everlastingly dying and reviving
to the tormenting fact of her existence. Perhaps
she had taken something? Anything. Some small object.
I thought suddenly of a Rhenish-stone match-box.
Perhaps it was that. I didn't remember having seen
it when upstairs. I wanted to make sure at once. At
once. But I commanded myself to sit still.

  ``And she so wealthy,'' Therese went on. ``Even you
with your dear generous little heart can do nothing for
our Rita. No man can do anything for her---except
perhaps one, but she is so evilly disposed towards him
that she wouldn't even see him, if in the goodness of his
forgiving heart he were to offer his hand to her. It's her
bad conscience that frightens her. He loves her more
than his life, the dear, charitable man.''

  ``You mean some rascal in Paris that I believe persecutes
Do<n~>a Rita. Listen, Mademoiselle Therese, if you
know where he hangs out you had better let him have
word to be careful. I believe he, too, is mixed up in the
Carlist intrigue. Don't you know that your sister can
get him shut up any day or get him expelled by the
police?''

  Therese sighed deeply and put on a look of pained
virtue.

  ``Oh, the hardness of her heart. She tried to be tender
with me. She is awful. I said to her, `Rita, have you
sold your soul to the Devil?' and she shouted like a fiend:
`For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!' She threw herself backwards
on that couch in your room and laughed and laughed and
laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed
on the floor with the heels of her shoes. She is possessed.
Oh, my dear innocent young Monsieur, you have never
seen anything like that. That wicked girl who serves
her rushed in with a tiny glass bottle and put it to
her nose; but I had a mind to run out and fetch the
priest from the church where I go to early mass. Such
a nice, stout, severe man. But that false, cheating creature
(I am sure she is robbing our Rita from morning to
night), she talked to our Rita very low and quieted her
down. I am sure I don't know what she said. She must
be leagued with the devil. And then she asked me if I
would go down and make a cup of chocolate for her
Madame. Madame---that's our Rita. Madame! It
seems they were going off directly to Paris and her
Madame had had nothing to eat since the morning of the
day before. Fancy me being ordered to make chocolate
for our Rita! However, the poor thing looked so exhausted
and white-faced that I went. Ah! the devil can
give you an awful shake up if he likes.''

  Therese fetched another deep sigh and raising her eyes
looked at me with great attention. I preserved an inscrutable
expression, for I wanted to hear all she had to
tell me of Rita. I watched her with the greatest anxiety
composing her face into a cheerful expression.

  ``So Do<n~>a Rita is gone to Paris?'' I asked negligently.

  ``Yes, my dear Monsieur. I believe she went straight
to the railway station from here. When she first got up
from the couch she could hardly stand. But before,
while she was drinking the chocolate which I made for
her, I tried to get her to sign a paper giving over the house
to me, but she only closed her eyes and begged me to try
and be a good sister and leave her alone for half an hour.
And she lying there looking as if she wouldn't live a day.
But she always hated me.''

  I said bitterly, ``You needn't have worried her like this.
If she had not lived for another day you would have had
this house and everything else besides; a bigger bit than
even your wolfish throat can swallow, Mademoiselle
Therese.''

  I then said a few more things indicative of my disgust
with her rapacity, but they were quite inadequate, as I
wasn't able to find words strong enough to express my
real mind. But it didn't matter really because I don't
think Therese heard me at all. She seemed lost in rapt
amazement.

  ``What do you say, my dear Monsieur? What! All for
me without any sort of paper?''

  She appeared distracted by my curt: ``Yes.'' Therese
believed in my truthfulness. She believed me implicitly,
except when I was telling her the truth about herself,
mincing no words, when she used to stand smilingly
bashful as if I were overwhelming her with compliments.
I expected her to continue the horrible tale but apparently
she had found something to think about which checked
the flow. She fetched another sigh and muttered:

  ``Then the law can be just, if it does not require any
paper. After all, I am her sister.''

  ``It's very difficult to believe that---at sight,'' I said
roughly.

  ``Ah, but that I could prove. There are papers for
that.''

  After this declaration she began to clear the table,
preserving a thoughtful silence.

  I was not very surprised at the news of Do<n~>a Rita's
departure for Paris. It was not necessary to ask myself
why she had gone. I didn't even ask myself whether she
had left the leased Villa on the Prado for ever. Later
talking again with Therese, I learned that her sister had
given it up for the use of the Carlist cause and that some
sort of unofficial Consul, a Carlist agent of some sort,
either was going to live there or had already taken possession.
This, Rita herself had told her before her departure
on that agitated morning spent in the house---in my
rooms. A close investigation demonstrated to me that
there was nothing missing from them. Even the wretched
match-box which I really hoped was gone turned up in a
drawer after I had, delightedly, given it up. It was a
great blow. She might have taken that at least! She
knew I used to carry it about with me constantly while
ashore. She might have taken it! Apparently she
meant that there should be no bond left even of that kind
and yet it was a long time before I gave up visiting and
revisiting all the corners of all possible receptacles for
something that she might have left behind on purpose.
It was like the mania of those disordered minds who spend
their days hunting for a treasure. I hoped for a forgotten
hairpin, for some tiny piece of ribbon. Sometimes at
night I reflected that such hopes were altogether insensate
but I remember once getting up at two in the morning
to search for a little cardboard box in the bathroom, into
which, I remembered, I had not looked before. Of course
it was empty; and, anyway, Rita could not possibly have
known of its existence. I got back to bed shivering
violently, though the night was warm, and with a distinct
impression that this thing would end by making me mad.
It was no longer a question of ``this sort of thing'' killing
me. The moral atmosphere of this torture was different.
It would make me mad. And at that thought great
shudders ran down my prone body, because, once, I had
visited a famous lunatic asylum where they had shown me
a poor wretch who was mad, apparently, because he thought
he had been abominably fooled by a woman. They told
me that his grievance was quite imaginary. He was a
young man with a thin fair beard, huddled up on the edge
of his bed, hugging himself forlornly; and his incessant
and lamentable wailing filled the long bare corridor, striking
a chill into one's heart long before one came to the door
of his cell.

  And there was no one from whom I could hear, to whom
I could speak, with whom I could evoke the image of Rita.
Of course I could utter that word of four letters to Therese;
but Therese for some reason took it into her head to avoid
all topics connected with her sister. I felt as if I could
pull out great handfuls of her hair hidden modestly under
the black handkerchief of which the ends were sometimes
tied under her chin. But, really, I could not have given
her any intelligible excuse for that outrage. Moreover,
she was very busy from the very top to the very bottom
of the house, which she persisted in running alone because
she couldn't make up her mind to part with a few francs
every month to a servant. It seemed to me that I was
no longer such a favourite with her as I used to be. That,
strange to say, was exasperating, too. It was as if some
idea, some fruitful notion had killed in her all the softer
and more humane emotions. She went about with brooms
and dusters wearing an air of sanctimonious thoughtfulness.

  The man who to a certain extent took my place in
Therese's favour was the old father of the dancing girls
inhabiting the ground floor. In a tall hat and a well-to-do
dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be buttonholed
in the hall by Therese who would talk to him interminably
with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely down
at her, and meanwhile tried to edge towards the front door.
I imagine he didn't put a great value on Therese's favour.
Our stay in harbour was prolonged this time and I kept
indoors like an invalid. One evening I asked that old
man to come in and drink and smoke with me in the studio.
He made no difficulties to accept, brought his wooden
pipe with him, and was very entertaining in a pleasant
voice. One couldn't tell whether he was an uncommon
person or simply a ruffian, but in any ease with his white
beard he looked quite venerable. Naturally he couldn't
give me much of his company as he had to look closely
after his girls and their admirers; not that the girls were
unduly frivolous, but of course being very young they
had no experience. They were friendly creatures with
pleasant, merry voices and he was very much devoted
to them. He was a muscular man with a high colour
and silvery locks curling round his bald pate and over
his ears, like a _barocco_ apostle. I had an idea that he
had had a lurid past and had seen some fighting in
his youth. The admirers of the two girls stood in
great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his
behaviour to them was friendly and even somewhat
obsequious, yet always with a certain truculent glint in
his eye that made them pause in everything but their
generosity---which was encouraged. I sometimes
wondered whether those two careless, merry hard-working
creatures understood the secret moral beauty
of the situation.

  My real company was the dummy in the studio and I
can't say it was exactly satisfying. After taking possession
of the studio I had raised it tenderly, dusted its
mangled limbs and insensible, hard-wood bosom, and then
had propped it up in a corner where it seemed to take
on, of itself, a shy attitude. I knew its history. It was
not an ordinary dummy. One day, talking with Do<n~>a
Rita about her sister, I had told her that I thought
Therese used to knock it down on purpose with a broom,
and Do<n~>a Rita had laughed very much. This, she had
said, was an instance of dislike from mere instinct. That
dummy had been made to measure years before. It
had to wear for days and days the Imperial Byzantine
robes in which Do<n~>a Rita sat only once or twice herself;
but of course the folds and bends of the stuff had to be
preserved as in the first sketch. Do<n~>a Rita described
amusingly how she had to stand in the middle of her room
while Rose walked around her with a tape measure noting
the figures down on a small piece of paper which was then
sent to the maker, who presently returned it with an
angry letter stating that those proportions were altogether
impossible in any woman. Apparently Rose had
muddled them all up; and it was a long time before the
figure was finished and sent to the Pavilion in a long
basket to take on itself the robes and the hieratic pose of
the Empress. Later, it wore with the same patience the
marvellous hat of the ``Girl in the Hat.'' But Do<n~>a
Rita couldn't understand how the poor thing ever found
its way to Marseilles minus its turnip head. Probably
it came down with the robes and a quantity of precious
brocades which she herself had sent down from Paris.
The knowledge of its origin, the contempt of Captain
Blunt's references to it, with Therese's shocked dislike
of the dummy, invested that summary reproduction with
a sort of charm, gave me a faint and miserable illusion
of the original, less artificial than a photograph, less
precise, too. . . . But it can't be explained. I felt
positively friendly to it as if it had been Rita's trusted
personal attendant. I even went so far as to discover
that it had a sort of grace of its own. But I never went
so far as to address set speeches to it where it lurked shyly
in its corner, or drag it out from there for contemplation.
I left it in peace. I wasn't mad. I was only convinced
that I soon would be.


			II

  Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few
people on account of all these Royalist affairs which I
couldn't very well drop, and in truth did not wish to
drop. They were my excuse for remaining in Europe,
which somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave
for the West Indies, or elsewhere. On the other hand,
my adventurous pursuit kept me in contact with the sea
where I found occupation, protection, consolation, the
mental relief of grappling with concrete problems, the
sanity one acquires from close contact with simple mankind,
a little self-confidence born from the dealings with
the elemental powers of nature. I couldn't give all that
up. And besides all this was related to Do<n~>a Rita. I
had, as it were, received it all from her own hand, from
that hand the clasp of which was as frank as a man's and
yet conveyed a unique sensation. The very memory of
it would go through me like a wave of heat. It was over
that hand that we first got into the habit of quarrelling,
with the irritability of sufferers from some obscure pain
and yet half unconscious of their disease. Rita's own
spirit hovered over the troubled waters of Legitimity.
But as to the sound of the four magic letters of her name
I was not very likely to hear it fall sweetly on my ear.
For instance, the distinguished personality in the world of
finance with whom I had to confer several times, alluded
to the irresistible seduction of the power which reigned
over my heart and my mind; which had a mysterious
and unforgettable face, the brilliance of sunshine together
with the unfathomable splendour of the night as---Madame
de Lastaola. That's how that steel-grey man called the
greatest mystery of the universe. When uttering that
assumed name he would make for himself a guardedly
solemn and reserved face as though he were afraid lest I
should presume to smile, lest he himself should venture
to smile, and the sacred formality of our relations should
be outraged beyond mending.

  He would refer in a studiously grave tone to Madame
de Lastaola's wishes, plans, activities, instructions, movements;
or picking up a letter from the usual litter of
paper found on such men's desks, glance at it to refresh
his memory; and, while the very sight of the handwriting
would make my lips go dry, would ask me in a bloodless
voice whether perchance I had ``a direct communication
from---er---Paris lately.'' And there would be other
maddening circumstances connected with those visits.
He would treat me as a serious person having a clear view
of certain eventualities, while at the very moment my
vision could see nothing but streaming across the wall at
his back, abundant and misty, unearthly and adorable,
a mass of tawny hair that seemed to have hot sparks
tangled in it. Another nuisance was the atmosphere of
Royalism, of Legitimacy, that pervaded the room, thin
as air, intangible, as though no Legitimist of flesh and
blood had ever existed to the man's mind except perhaps
myself. He, of course, was just simply a banker, a very
distinguished, a very influential, and a very impeccable
banker. He persisted also in deferring to my judgment
and sense with an over-emphasis called out by his perpetual
surprise at my youth. Though he had seen me
many times (I even knew his wife) he could never get
over my immature age. He himself was born about
fifty years old, all complete, with his iron-grey whiskers
and his bilious eyes, which he had the habit of frequently
closing during a conversation. On one occasion he said
to me ``By the by, the Marquis of Villarel is here for a
time. He inquired after you the last time he called on
me. May I let him know that you are in town?''

  I didn't say anything to that. The Marquis of Villarel
was the Don Rafael of Rita's own story. What had I to
do with Spanish grandees? And for that matter what had
she, the woman of all time, to do with all the villainous
or splendid disguises human dust takes upon itself? All
this was in the past, and I was acutely aware that for me
there was no present, no future, nothing but a hollow
pain, a vain passion of such magnitude that being locked
up within my breast it gave me an illusion of lonely
greatness with my miserable head uplifted amongst the
stars. But when I made up my mind (which I did quickly,
to be done with it) to call on the banker's wife, almost
the first thing she said to me was that the Marquis de
Villarel was ``amongst us.'' She said it joyously. If in
her husband's room at the bank legitimism was a mere
unpopulated principle, in her salon Legitimacy was nothing
but persons. ``_Il m'a caus<e'> beaucoup de vous,_'' she said
as if there had been a joke in it of which I ought to be
proud. I slunk away from her. I couldn't believe that
the grandee had talked to her about me. I had never
felt myself part of the great Royalist enterprise. I
confess that I was so indifferent to everything, so profoundly
demoralized, that having once got into that
drawing-room I hadn't the strength to get away; though
I could see perfectly well my volatile hostess going from
one to another of her acquaintances in order to tell them
with a little gesture, ``Look! Over there---in that corner.
That's the notorious Monsieur George.'' At last she herself
drove me out by coming to sit by me vivaciously
and going into ecstasies over ``_ce cher_ Monsieur Mills''
and that magnificent Lord X; and ultimately, with a
perfectly odious snap in the eyes and drop in the voice,
dragging in the name of Madame de Lastaola and asking
me whether I was really so much in the confidence of
that astonishing person. ``_Vous devez bien regretter son
d<e'>part pour Paris,_'' she cooed, looking with affected bashfulness
at her fan. . . . How I got out of the room I
really don't know. There was also a staircase. I did
not fall down it head first---that much I am certain of;
and I also remember that I wandered for a long time
about the seashore and went home very late, by the way
of the Prado, giving in passing a fearful glance at the
Villa. It showed not a gleam of light through the thin
foliage of its trees.

  I spent the next day with Dominic on board the little
craft watching the shipwrights at work on her deck.
From the way they went about their business those
men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly
refreshed by my company during the day. Dominic, too,
devoted himself to his business, but his taciturnity was
sardonic. Then I dropped in at the caf<e'> and Madame
L<e'>onore's loud ``Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!''
pleased me by its resonant friendliness. But I found the
sparkle of her black eyes as she sat down for a moment
opposite me while I was having my drink rather difficult
to bear. That man and that woman seemed to know
something. What did they know? At parting she pressed
my hand significantly. What did she mean? But I
didn't feel offended by these manifestations. The souls
within these people's breasts were not volatile in the
manner of slightly scented and inflated bladders. Neither
had they the impervious skins which seem the rule in the
fine world that wants only to get on. Somehow they had
sensed that there was something wrong; and whatever
impression they might have formed for themselves I had
the certitude that it would not be for them a matter of
grins at my expense.

  That day on returning home I found Therese looking
out for me, a very unusual occurrence of late. She handed
me a card bearing the name of the Marquis de Villarel.

  ``How did you come by this?'' I asked. She turned
on at once the tap of her volubility and I was not surprised
to learn that the grandee had not done such an
extraordinary thing as to call upon me in person. A
young gentleman had brought it. Such a nice young
gentleman, she interjected with her piously ghoulish expression.
He was not very tall. He had a very smooth
complexion (that woman was incorrigible) and a nice, tiny
black moustache. Therese was sure that he must have
been an officer _en las filas legitimas._ With that notion in
her head she had asked him about the welfare of that
other model of charm and elegance, Captain Blunt. To
her extreme surprise the charming young gentleman with
beautiful eyes had apparently never heard of Blunt. But
he seemed very much interested in his surroundings, looked
all round the hall, noted the costly wood of the door
panels, paid some attention to the silver statuette holding
up the defective gas burner at the foot of the stairs,
and, finally, asked whether this was in very truth the
house of the most excellent Se<n~>ora Do<n~>a Rita de Lastaola.
The question staggered Therese, but with great presence
of mind she answered the young gentleman that she
didn't know what excellence there was about it, but that
the house was her property, having been given to her
by her own sister. At this the young gentleman looked
both puzzled and angry, turned on his heel, and got back
into his fiacre. Why should people be angry with a poor
girl who had never done a single reprehensible thing in
her whole life?

  ``I suppose our Rita does tell people awful lies about
her poor sister.'' She sighed deeply (she had several
kinds of sighs and this was the hopeless kind) and added
reflectively, ``Sin on sin, wickedness on wickedness! And
the longer she lives the worse it will be. It would be
better for our Rita to be dead.''

  I told ``Mademoiselle Therese'' that it was really impossible
to tell whether she was more stupid or atrocious
but I wasn't really very much shocked. These outbursts
did not signify anything in Therese. One got used to
them. They were merely the expression of her rapacity
and her righteousness; so that our conversation ended
by my asking her whether she had any dinner ready for
me that evening.

  ``What's the good of getting you anything to eat, my
dear young Monsieur,'' she quizzed me tenderly. ``You
just only peck like a little bird. Much better let me save
the money for you.'' It will show the super-terrestrial
nature of my misery when I say that I was quite surprised
at Therese's view of my appetite. Perhaps she
was right. I certainly did not know. I stared hard at
her and in the end she admitted that the dinner was in
fact ready that very moment.

  The new young gentleman within Therese's horizon
didn't surprise me very much. Villarel would travel with
some sort of suite, a couple of secretaries at least. I had
heard enough of Carlist headquarters to know that the
man had been (very likely was still) Captain General of
the Royal Bodyguard and was a person of great political
(and domestic) influence at Court. The card was, under
its social form, a mere command to present myself before
the grandee. No Royalist devoted by conviction, as I
must have appeared to him, could have mistaken the
meaning. I put the card in my pocket and after dining
or not dining---I really don't remember---spent the evening
smoking in the studio, pursuing thoughts of tenderness
and grief, visions exalting and cruel. From time to time
I looked at the dummy. I even got up once from the
couch on which I had been writhing like a worm and
walked towards it as if to touch it, but refrained, not
from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by
Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she
was on her way to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful,
rustic innocence and started propounding to me a
conundrum which began with the words:

  ``If our Rita were to die before long . . .''

  She didn't get any further because I had jumped up
and frightened her by shouting: ``Is she ill? What has
happened? Have you had a letter?''

  She had had a letter. I didn't ask her to show it to
me, though I daresay she would have done so. I had
an idea that there was no meaning in anything, at least
no meaning that mattered. But the interruption had
made Therese apparently forget her sinister conundrum.
She observed me with her shrewd, unintelligent eyes for
a bit, and then with the fatuous remark about the Law
being just she left me to the horrors of the studio. I
believe I went to sleep there from sheer exhaustion. Some
time during the night I woke up chilled to the bone and
in the dark. These were horrors and no mistake. I
dragged myself upstairs to bed past the indefatigable
statuette holding up the ever-miserable light. The black-and-white
hall was like an ice-house.

  The main consideration which induced me to call on
the Marquis of Villarel was the fact that after all I was
a discovery of Do<n~>a Rita's, her own recruit. My fidelity
and steadfastness had been guaranteed by her and no
one else. I couldn't bear the idea of her being criticized
by every empty-headed chatterer belonging to the Cause.
And as, apart from that, nothing mattered much, why,
then---I would get this over.

  But it appeared that I had not reflected sufficiently on
all the consequences of that step. First of all the sight of
the Villa looking shabbily cheerful in the sunshine (but not
containing her any longer) was so perturbing that I very
nearly went away from the gate. Then when I got in
after much hesitation---being admitted by the man in the
green baize apron who recognized me---the thought of
entering that room, out of which she was gone as completely
as if she had been dead, gave me such an emotion
that I had to steady myself against the table till the
faintness was past. Yet I was irritated as at a treason
when the man in the baize apron instead of letting me
into the Pompeiian dining-room crossed the hall to another
door not at all in the Pompeiian style (more Louis XV
rather---that Villa was like a _Salade Russe_ of styles) and
introduced me into a big, light room full of very modern
furniture. The portrait _en pied_ of an officer in a sky-blue
uniform hung on the end wall. The officer had a small
head, a black beard cut square, a robust body, and leaned
with gauntleted hands on the simple hilt of a straight
sword. That striking picture dominated a massive
mahogany desk, and, in front of this desk, a very roomy,
tall-backed armchair of dark green velvet. I thought I
had been announced into an empty room till glancing
along the extremely loud carpet I detected a pair of feet
under the armchair.

  I advanced towards it and discovered a little man,
who had made no sound or movement till I came into
his view, sunk deep in the green velvet. He altered his
position slowly and rested his hollow, black, quietly burning
eyes on my face in prolonged scrutiny. I detected
something comminatory in his yellow, emaciated countenance,
but I believe now he was simply startled by my
youth. I bowed profoundly. He extended a meagre
little hand.

  ``Take a chair, Don Jorge.''

  He was very small, frail, and thin, but his voice was
not languid, though he spoke hardly above his breath.
Such was the envelope and the voice of the fanatical soul
belonging to the Grand-master of Ceremonies and Captain
General of the Bodyguard at the Headquarters of the
Legitimist Court, now detached on a special mission. He
was all fidelity, inflexibility, and sombre conviction, but
like some great saints he had very little body to keep all
these merits in.

  ``You are very young,'' he remarked, to begin with.
``The matters on which I desired to converse with you
are very grave.''

  ``I was under the impression that your Excellency
wished to see me at once. But if your Excellency prefers
it I will return in, say, seven years' time when I may
perhaps be old enough to talk about grave matters.''

  He didn't stir hand or foot and not even the quiver
of an eyelid proved that he had heard my shockingly
unbecoming retort.

  ``You have been recommended to us by a noble and
loyal lady, in whom His Majesty---whom God preserve---
reposes an entire confidence. God will reward her as she
deserves and you, too, Se<n~>or, according to the disposition
you bring to this great work which has the blessing (here
he crossed himself) of our Holy Mother the Church.''

  ``I suppose your Excellency understands that in all
this I am not looking for reward of any kind.''

  At this he made a faint, almost ethereal grimace.

  ``I was speaking of the spiritual blessing which rewards
the service of religion and will be of benefit to your soul,''
he explained with a slight touch of acidity. ``The other
is perfectly understood and your fidelity is taken for
granted. His Majesty---whom God preserve---has been
already pleased to signify his satisfaction with your services
to the most noble and loyal Do<n~>a Rita by a letter in his
own hand.''

  Perhaps he expected me to acknowledge this announcement
in some way, speech, or bow, or something, because
before my immobility he made a slight movement in his
chair which smacked of impatience. ``I am afraid, Se<n~>or,
that you are affected by the spirit of scoffing and irreverence
which pervades this unhappy country of France in
which both you and I are strangers, I believe. Are you
a young man of that sort?''

  ``I am a very good gun-runner, your Excellency,'' I
answered quietly.

  He bowed his head gravely. ``We are aware. But I
was looking for the motives which ought to have their
pure source in religion.''

  ``I must confess frankly that I have not reflected on
my motives,'' I said. ``It is enough for me to know that
they are not dishonourable and that anybody can see
they are not the motives of an adventurer seeking some
sordid advantage.''

  He had listened patiently and when he saw that there
was nothing more to come he ended the discussion.

  ``Se<n~>or, we should reflect upon our motives. It is salutary
for our conscience and is recommended (he crossed
himself) by our Holy Mother the Church. I have here
certain letters from Paris on which I would consult your
young sagacity which is accredited to us by the most
loyal Do<n~>a Rita.''

  The sound of that name on his lips was simply odious.
I was convinced that this man of forms and ceremonies
and fanatical royalism was perfectly heartless. Perhaps
he reflected on his motives; but it seemed to me that his
conscience could be nothing else but a monstrous thing
which very few actions could disturb appreciably. Yet
for the credit of Do<n~>a Rita I did not withhold from him
my young sagacity. What he thought of it I don't know,
The matters we discussed were not of course of high policy,
though from the point of view of the war in the south they
were important enough. We agreed on certain things to
be done, and finally, always out of regard for Do<n~>a Rita's
credit, I put myself generally at his disposition or of any
Carlist agent he would appoint in his place; for I did not
suppose that he would remain very long in Marseilles.
He got out of the chair laboriously, like a sick child might
have done. The audience was over but he noticed my
eyes wandering to the portrait and he said in his measured,
breathed-out tones

  ``I owe the pleasure of having this admirable work here
to the gracious attention of Madame de Lastaola, who,
knowing my attachment to the royal person of my Master,
has sent it down from Paris to greet me in this house
which has been given up for my occupation also through
her generosity to the Royal Cause. Unfortunately she,
too, is touched by the infection of this irreverent and
unfaithful age. But she is young yet. She is young.''

  These last words were pronounced in a strange tone of
menace as though he were supernaturally aware of some
suspended disasters. With his burning eyes he was the
image of an Inquisitor with an unconquerable soul in that
frail body. But suddenly he dropped his eyelids and the
conversation finished as characteristically as it had begun
with a slow, dismissing inclination of the head and an
``Adios, Se<n~>or---may God guard you from sin.''



			III

  I must say that for the next three months I threw myself
into my unlawful trade with a sort of desperation, dogged
and hopeless, like a fairly decent fellow who takes deliberately
to drink. The business was getting dangerous. The
bands in the South were not very well organized, worked
with no very definite plan, and now were beginning to be
pretty closely hunted. The arrangements for the transport
of supplies were going to pieces; our friends ashore were
getting scared; and it was no joke to find after a day of
skilful dodging that there was no one at the landing place
and have to go out again with our compromising cargo,
to slink and lurk about the coast for another week or so,
unable to trust anybody and looking at every vessel we
met with suspicion. Once we were ambushed by a lot of
``rascally Carabineers,'' as Dominic called them, who hid
themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of
mules well in view on the seashore. Luckily, on evidence
which I could never understand, Dominic detected something
suspicious. Perhaps it was by virtue of some sixth
sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be
gifted with. ``There is a smell of treachery about this,''
he remarked suddenly, turning at his oar. (He and I
were pulling alone in a little boat to reconnoitre.) I
couldn't detect any smell and I regard to this day our
escape on that occasion as, properly speaking, miraculous.
Surely some supernatural power must have struck upwards
the barrels of the Carabineers' rifles, for they missed us
by yards. And as the Carabineers have the reputation
of shooting straight, Dominic, after swearing most horribly,
ascribed our escape to the particular guardian angel that
looks after crazy young gentlemen. Dominic believed in
angels in a conventional way, but laid no claim to having
one of his own. Soon afterwards, while sailing quietly at
night, we found ourselves suddenly near a small coasting
vessel, also without lights, which all at once treated us
to a volley of rifle fire. Dominic's mighty and inspired
yell ``_A plat ventre!_'' and also an unexpected roll to
windward saved all our lives. Nobody got a scratch. We
were past in a moment and in a breeze then blowing we
had the heels of anything likely to give us chase. But an
hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the
darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth
``_Le m<e'>tier se g<a^>te._'' I, too, had the feeling that the trade,
if not altogether spoiled, had seen its best days. But I
did not care. In fact, for my purpose it was rather better,
a more potent influence; like the stronger intoxication of
raw spirit. A volley in the dark after all was not such
a bad thing. Only a moment before we had received it,
there, in that calm night of the sea full of freshness and
soft whispers, I had been looking at an enchanting turn
of a head in a faint light of its own, the tawny hair with
snared red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white
neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered
with brilliants and with ruby gleams all along its shaft.
That jewelled ornament, which I remember often telling
Rita was of a very Philistinish conception (it was in some
way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an
undue place in my memory, tried to come into some sort
of significance even in my sleep. Often I dreamed of her
with white limbs shimmering in the gloom like a nymph
haunting a riot of foliage and raising a perfect round arm
by hand, like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of
light, but I always woke up before it struck. Always.
Invariably. It never had a chance. A volley of small
arms was much more likely to do the business some
day---or night.

			*

  At last came the day when everything slipped out of
my grasp. The little vessel, broken and gone like the only
toy of a lonely child, the sea itself, which had swallowed
it, throwing me on shore after a shipwreck that instead
of a fair fight left in me the memory of a suicide. It took
away all that there was in me of independent life, but
just failed to take me out of the world, which looked
then indeed like Another World fit for no one else but
unrepentant sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his moral
entity destroyed by what to him was a most tragic ending
of our common enterprise. The lurid swiftness of it all
was like a stunning thunder-clap---and, one evening, I
found myself weary, heartsore, my brain still dazed and
with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the
railway station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable
than another, involving privations, great exertions,
a lot of difficulties with all sorts of people who looked
upon me evidently more as a discreditable vagabond
deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a respectable
(if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel
of his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway
station shunning its many lights as if, invariably, failure
made an outcast of a man. I hadn't any money in my
pocket. I hadn't even the bundle and the stick of a
destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and unwashed, and
my heart was faint within me. My attire was such that
I daren't approach the rank of fiacres, where indeed I
could perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which one
suddenly drove away while I looked. The other I gave
up to the fortunate of this earth. I didn't believe in my
power of persuasion. I had no powers. I slunk on and
on, shivering with cold, through the uproarious streets.
Bedlam was loose in them. It was the time of Carnival.

  Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking
to a man in an astonishing way. I had nearly lost my
liberty and even my life, I had lost my ship, a money-belt
full of gold, I had lost my companions, had parted from
my friend; my occupation, my only link with life, my
touch with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone---but a
small penknife and a latchkey had never parted company
with me. With the latchkey I opened the door of refuge.
The hall wore its deaf-and-dumb air, its black-and-white
stillness.

  The sickly gas-jet still struggled bravely with adversity
at the end of the raised silver arm of the statuette which
had kept to a hair's breadth its graceful pose on the toes
of its left foot; and the staircase lost itself in the shadows
above. Therese was parsimonious with the lights. To
see all this was surprising. It seemed to me that all the
things I had known ought to have come down with a crash
at the moment of the final catastrophe on the Spanish
coast. And there was Therese herself descending the
stairs, frightened but plucky. Perhaps she thought that
she would be murdered this time for certain. She had a
strange, unemotional conviction that the house was particularly
convenient for a crime. One could never get to
the bottom of her wild notions which she held with the
stolidity of a peasant allied to the outward serenity of
a nun. She quaked all over as she came down to her
doom, but when she recognized me she got such a shock
that she sat down suddenly on the lowest step. She did
not expect me for another week at least, and, besides,
she explained, the state I was in made her blood take
``one turn.''

  Indeed my plight seemed either to have called out
or else repressed her true nature. But who had ever
fathomed her nature! There was none of her treacly
volubility. There were none of her ``dear young gentlemans''
and ``poor little hearts'' and references to sin.
In breathless silence she ran about the house getting my
room ready, lighting fires and gas-jets and even hauling
at me to help me up the stairs. Yes, she did lay hands
on me for that charitable purpose. They trembled. Her
pale eyes hardly left my face. ``What brought you here
like this?'' she whispered once.

  ``If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would
see there the hand of God.''

  She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then
nearly fell over it. ``Oh, dear heart,'' she murmured, and
ran off to the kitchen.

  I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared
very misty and offering me something in a cup. I believe
it was hot milk, and after I drank it she took the cup
and stood looking at me fixedly. I managed to say with
difficulty: ``Go away,'' whereupon she vanished as if by
magic before the words were fairly out of my mouth.
Immediately afterwards the sunlight forced through the
slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and Therese was
there again as if by magic, saying in a distant voice:

  ``It's midday.'' . . . Youth will have its rights. I had
slept like a stone for seventeen hours.

  I suppose an honourable bankrupt would know such
an awakening: the sense of catastrophe, the shrinking
from the necessity of beginning life again, the faint feeling
that there are misfortunes which must be paid for by a
hanging. In the course of the morning Therese informed
me that the apartment usually occupied by Mr. Blunt
was vacant and added mysteriously that she intended to
keep it vacant for a time, because she had been instructed
to do so. I couldn't imagine why Blunt should wish to
return to Marseilles. She told me also that the house was
empty except for myself and the two dancing girls with
their father. Those people had been away for some time
as the girls had engagements in some Italian summer
theatres, but apparently they had secured a re-engagement
for the winter and were now back. I let Therese talk
because it kept my imagination from going to work on
subjects which, I had made up my mind, were no concern
of mine. But I went out early to perform an unpleasant
task. It was only proper that I should let the Carlist
agent ensconced in the Prado Villa know of the sudden
ending of my activities. It would be grave enough news
for him, and I did not like to be its bearer for reasons
which were mainly personal. I resembled Dominic in so
far that I, too, disliked failure.

  The Marquis of Villarel had of course gone long before.
The man who was there was another type of Carlist
altogether, and his temperament was that of a trader.
He was the chief purveyor of the Legitimist armies, an
honest broker of stores, and enjoyed a great reputation
for cleverness. His important task kept him, of course,
in France, but his young wife, whose beauty and devotion
to her King were well known, represented him worthily at
Headquarters, where his own appearances were extremely
rare. The dissimilar but united loyalties of those two
people had been rewarded by the title of baron and the
ribbon of some order or other. The gossip of the Legitimist
circles appreciated those favours with smiling indulgence.
He was the man who had been so distressed and frightened
by Do<n~>a Rita's first visit to Tolosa. He had an extreme
regard for his wife. And in that sphere of clashing arms
and unceasing intrigue nobody would have smiled then
at his agitation if the man himself hadn't been somewhat
grotesque.

  He must have been startled when I sent in my name,
for he didn't of course expect to see me yet---nobody
expected me. He advanced soft-footed down the room.
With his jutting nose, flat-topped skull and sable garments
he recalled an obese raven, and when he heard of the
disaster he manifested his astonishment and concern in
a most plebeian manner by a low and expressive whistle.
I, of course, could not share his consternation. My
feelings in that connection were of a different order; but
I was annoyed at his unintelligent stare.

  ``I suppose,'' I said, ``you will take it on yourself to
advise Do<n~>a Rita, who is greatly interested in this affair.''

  ``Yes, but I was given to understand that Madame
de Lastaola was to leave Paris either yesterday or this
morning.''

  It was my turn to stare dumbly before I could manage
to ask: ``For Tolosa?'' in a very knowing tone.

  Whether it was the droop of his head, play of light, or
some other subtle cause, his nose seemed to have grown
perceptibly longer.

  ``That, Se<n~>or, is the place where the news has got to
be conveyed without undue delay,'' he said in an agitated
wheeze. ``I could, of course, telegraph to our agent in
Bayonne who would find a messenger. But I don't like,
I don't like! The Alphonsists have agents, too, who hang
about the telegraph offices. It's no use letting the enemy
get that news.''

  He was obviously very confused, unhappy, and trying
to think of two different things at once.

  ``Sit down, Don George, sit down.'' He absolutely
forced a cigar on me. ``I am extremely distressed.
That---I mean Do<n~>a Rita is undoubtedly on her way to
Tolosa. This is very frightful.''

  I must say, however, that there was in the man some
sense of duty. He mastered his private fears. After
some cogitation he murmured: ``There is another way
of getting the news to Headquarters. Suppose you write
me a formal letter just stating the facts, the unfortunate
facts, which I will be able to forward. There is an agent
of ours, a fellow I have been employing for purchasing
supplies, a perfectly honest man. He is coming here from
the north by the ten o'clock train with some papers for me
of a confidential nature. I was rather embarrassed about
it. It wouldn't do for him to get into any sort of trouble.
He is not very intelligent. I wonder, Don George, whether
you would consent to meet him at the station and take
care of him generally till to-morrow. I don't like the
idea of him going about alone. Then, to-morrow night,
we would send him on to Tolosa by the west coast route,
with the news; and then he can also call on Do<n~>a Rita
who will no doubt be already there. . . .'' he became
again distracted all in a moment and actually went so far
as to wring his fat hands. ``Oh, yes, she will be there!''
he exclaimed in most pathetic accents.

  I was not in the humour to smile at anything, and he
must have been satisfied with the gravity with which I
beheld his extraordinary antics. My mind was very far
away. I thought: Why not? Why shouldn't I also
write a letter to Do<n~>a Rita, telling her that now nothing
stood in the way of my leaving Europe, because, really,
the enterprise couldn't be begun again; that things that
come to an end can never be begun again. The idea---
never again---had complete possession of my mind. I
could think of nothing else. Yes, I would write. The
worthy Commissary General of the Carlist forces was
under the impression that I was looking at him; but
what I had in my eye was a jumble of butterfly women
and winged youths and the soft sheen of Argand lamps
gleaming on an arrow of gold in the hair of a head that
seemed to evade my outstretched hand.

  ``Oh, yes,'' I said, ``I have nothing to do and even
nothing to think of just now. I will meet your man as
he gets off the train at ten o'clock to-night. What's he
like?''

  ``Oh, he has a black moustache and whiskers, and his
chin is shaved,'' said the newly-fledged baron cordially.

  ``A very honest fellow. I always found him very useful.
His name is Jos<e'> Ortega.''

  He was perfectly self-possessed now, and walking soft-footed
accompanied me to the door of the room. He
shook hands with a melancholy smile. ``This is a very
frightful situation. My poor wife will be quite distracted.
She is such a patriot. Many thanks, Don George. You
relieve me greatly. The fellow is rather stupid and rather
bad-tempered. Queer creature, but very honest! Oh,
very honest!''


			IV

  It was the last evening of Carnival. The same masks,
the same yells, the same mad rushes, the same bedlam of
disguised humanity blowing about the streets in the great
gusts of mistral that seemed to make them dance like
dead leaves on an earth where all joy is watched by death.

  It was exactly twelve months since that other carnival
evening when I had felt a little weary and a little lonely
but at peace with all mankind. It must have been---to
a day or two. But on this evening it wasn't merely loneliness
that I felt. I felt bereaved with a sense of a complete
and universal loss in which there was perhaps more
resentment than mourning; as if the world had not been
taken away from me by an august decree but filched
from my innocence by an underhand fate at the very
moment when it had disclosed to my passion its warm
and generous beauty. This consciousness of universal
loss had this advantage that it induced something resembling
a state of philosophic indifference. I walked up to
the railway station caring as little for the cold blasts of
wind as though I had been going to the scaffold. The
delay of the train did not irritate me in the least. I had
finally made up my mind to write a letter to Do<n~>a Rita;
and this ``honest fellow'' for whom I was waiting would
take it to her. He would have no difficulty in Tolosa in
finding Madame de Lastaola. The General Headquarters,
which was also a Court, would be buzzing with comments
on her presence. Most likely that ``honest fellow''
was already known to Do>n~>a Rita. For all I knew he
might have been her discovery just as I was. Probably
I, too, was regarded as an ``honest fellow'' enough; but
stupid---since it was clear that my luck was not inexhaustible.
I hoped that while carrying my letter the
man would not let himself be caught by some Alphonsist
guerilla who would, of course, shoot him. But why
should he? I, for instance, had escaped with my life
from a much more dangerous enterprise than merely passing
through the frontier line in charge of some trustworthy
guide. I pictured the fellow to myself trudging
over the stony slopes and scrambling down wild ravines
with my letter to Do<n~>a Rita in his pocket. It would be
such a letter of farewell as no lover had ever written, no
woman in the world had ever read, since the beginning of
love on earth. It would be worthy of the woman. No
experience, no memories, no dead traditions of passion or
language would inspire it. She herself would be its sole
inspiration. She would see her own image in it as in a
mirror; and perhaps then she would understand what it
was I was saying farewell to on the very threshold of my
life. A breath of vanity passed through my brain. A
letter as moving as her mere existence was moving would
be something unique. I regretted I was not a poet.

  I woke up to a great noise of feet, a sudden influx of
people through the doors of the platform. I made out
my man's whiskers at once---not that they were enormous,
but because I had been warned beforehand of their
existence by the excellent Commissary General. At first
I saw nothing of him but his whiskers: they were black
and cut somewhat in the shape of a shark's fin and so
very fine that the least breath of air animated them into
a sort of playful restlessness. The man's shoulders were
hunched up and when he had made his way clear of the
throng of passengers I perceived him as an unhappy and
shivery being. Obviously he didn't expect to be met,
because when I murmured an enquiring, ``Se<n~>or Ortega?''
into his ear he swerved away from me and nearly dropped
a little handbag he was carrying. His complexion
was uniformly pale, his mouth was red, but not engaging.
His social status was not very definite. He was wearing
a dark blue overcoat of no particular cut, his aspect had
no relief; yet those restless side-whiskers flanking his red
mouth and the suspicious expression of his black eyes
made him noticeable. This I regretted the more because
I caught sight of two skulking fellows, looking very much
like policemen in plain clothes, watching us from a corner
of the great hall. I hurried my man into a fiacre. He
had been travelling from early morning on cross-country
lines and after we got on terms a little confessed to being
very hungry and cold. His red lips trembled and I
noted an underhand, cynical curiosity when he had occasion
to raise his eyes to my face. I was in some doubt
how to dispose of him but as we rolled on at a jog trot I
cane to the conclusion that the best thing to do would
be to organize for him a shake-down in the studio. Obscure
lodging houses are precisely the places most looked
after by the police, and even the best hotels are bound to
keep a register of arrivals. I was very anxious that
nothing should stop his projected mission of courier to headquarters.
As we passed various street corners where the
mistral blast struck at us fiercely I could feel him shivering
by my side. However, Therese would have lighted
the iron stove in the studio before retiring for the night,
and, anyway, I would have to turn her out to make up
a bed on the couch. Service of the King! I must say
that she was amiable and didn't seem to mind anything
one asked her to do. Thus while the fellow slumbered
on the divan I would sit upstairs in my room setting
down on paper those great words of passion and sorrow
that seethed in my brain and even must have forced
themselves in murmurs on to my lips, because the man
by my side suddenly asked me: ``What did you say?''
---``Nothing,'' I answered, very much surprised. In the
shifting light of the street lamps he looked the picture of
bodily misery with his chattering teeth and his whiskers
blown back flat over his ears. But somehow he didn't
arouse my compassion. He was swearing to himself, in
French and Spanish, and I tried to soothe him by the
assurance that we had not much farther to go. ``I am
starving,'' he remarked acidly, and I felt a little compunction.
Clearly, the first thing to do was to feed him.
We were then entering the Cannebi<e`>re and as I didn't
care to show myself with him in the fashionable restaurant
where a new face (and such a face, too) would be remarked,
I pulled up the fiacre at the door of the Maison
Dor<e'>e. That was more of a place of general resort where,
in the multitude of casual patrons, he would pass unnoticed.

  For this last night of carnival the big house had decorated
all its balconies with rows of coloured paper lanterns
right up to the roof. I led the way to the grand salon,
for as to private rooms they had been all retained days
before. There was a great crowd of people in costume,
but by a piece of good luck we managed to secure a little
table in a corner. The revellers, intent on their pleasure,
paid no attention to us. Se<n~>or Ortega trod on my heels
and after sitting down opposite me threw an ill-natured
glance at the festive scene. It might have been about
half-past ten, then.

  Two glasses of wine he drank one after another did
not improve his temper. He only ceased to shiver. After
he had eaten something it must have occurred to him
that he had no reason to bear me a grudge and he tried
to assume a civil and even friendly manner. His mouth,
however, betrayed an abiding bitterness. I mean when
he smiled. In repose it was a very expressionless mouth,
only it was too red to be altogether ordinary. The whole
of him was like that: the whiskers too black, the hair
too shiny, the forehead too white, the eyes too mobile;
and he lent you his attention with an air of eagerness
which made you uncomfortable. He seemed to expect
you to give yourself away by some unconsidered word
that he would snap up with delight. It was that peculiarity
that somehow put me on my guard. I had no
idea who I was facing across the table and as a matter of
fact I did not care. All my impressions were blurred;
and even the promptings of my instinct were the haziest
thing imaginable. Now and then I had acute hallucinations
of a woman with an arrow of gold in her hair. This
caused alternate moments of exaltation and depression
from which I tried to take refuge in conversation; but
Se<n~>or Ortega was not stimulating. He was preoccupied
with personal matters. When suddenly he asked me
whether I knew why he had been called away from his
work (he had been buying supplies from peasants somewhere
in Central France), I answered that I didn't know
what the reason was originally, but I had an idea that
the present intention was to make of him a courier, bearing
certain messages from Baron H. to the _Quartel Real_
in Tolosa.

  He glared at me like a basilisk. ``And why have I
been met like this?'' he enquired with an air of being
prepared to hear a lie.

  I explained that it was the Baron's wish, as a matter
of prudence and to avoid any possible trouble which
might arise from enquiries by the police.

  He took it badly. ``What nonsense.'' He was---he
said---an employ<e'> (for several years) of Hernandez
Brothers in Paris, an importing firm, and he was travelling
on their business---as he could prove. He dived
into his side pocket and produced a handful of folded
papers of all sorts which he plunged back again instantly.

  And even then I didn't know whom I had there, opposite
me, busy now devouring a slice of p<a^>t<e'> de foie gras.
Not in the least. It never entered my head. How could
it? The Rita that haunted me had no history; she
was but the principle of life charged with fatality. Her
form was only a mirage of desire decoying one step by step
into despair.

  Se<n~>or Ortega gulped down some more wine and suggested
I should tell him who I was. ``It's only right I
should know,'' he added.

  This could not be gainsaid; and to a man connected
with the Carlist organization the shortest way was to introduce
myself as that ``Monsieur George'' of whom he
had probably heard.

  He leaned far over the table, till his very breast-bone
was over the edge, as though his eyes had been stilettos
and he wanted to drive them home into my brain. It
was only much later that I understood how near death I
had been at that moment. But the knives on the table-cloth
were the usual restaurant knives with rounded ends
and about as deadly as pieces of hoop-iron. Perhaps in
the very gust of his fury he remembered what a French
restaurant knife is like and something sane within him
made him give up the sudden project of cutting my heart
out where I sat. For it could have been nothing but a
sudden impulse. His settled purpose was quite other. It
was not my heart that he was after. His fingers indeed
were groping amongst the knife handles by the side of
his plate but what captivated my attention for a moment
were his red lips which were formed into an odd, sly, insinuating
smile. Heard! To be sure he had heard! The
chief of the great arms smuggling organization!

  ``Oh!'' I said, ``that's giving me too much importance.''
 The person responsible and whom I looked upon
as chief of all the business was, as he might have heard,
too, a certain noble and loyal lady.

  ``I am as noble as she is,'' he snapped peevishly, and I
put him down at once as a very offensive beast. ``And
as to being loyal, what is that? It is being truthful! It
is being faithful! I know all about her.''

  I managed to preserve an air of perfect unconcern. He
wasn't a fellow to whom one could talk of Do<n~>a Rita.

  ``You are a Basque,'' I said.

  He admitted rather contemptuously that he was a
Basque and even then the truth did not dawn upon me.
I suppose that with the hidden egoism of a lover I was
thinking of myself, of myself alone in relation to Do<n~>a
Rita, not of Do<n~>a Rita herself. He, too, obviously. He
said: ``I am an educated man, but I know her people,
all peasants. There is a sister, an uncle, a priest, a peasant,
too, and perfectly unenlightened. One can't expect
much from a priest (I am a free-thinker of course), but he
is really too bad, more like a brute beast. As to all her
people, mostly dead now, they never were of any account.
There was a little land, but they were always working
on other people's farms, a barefooted gang, a starved
lot. I ought to know because we are distant relations.
Twentieth cousins or something of the sort. Yes, I am
related to that most loyal lady. And what is she, after
all, but a Parisian woman with innumerable lovers, as I
have been told.''

  ``I don't think your information is very correct,'' I
said, affecting to yawn slightly. ``This is mere gossip of
the gutter and I am surprised at you, who really know
nothing about it---''

  But the disgusting animal had fallen into a brown
study. The hair of his very whiskers was perfectly still.
I had now given up all idea of the letter to Rita. Suddenly
he spoke again:

  ``Women are the origin of all evil. One should never
trust them. They have no honour. No honour!'' he
repeated, striking his breast with his closed fist on which
the knuckles stood out very white. ``I left my village
many years ago and of course I am perfectly satisfied
with my position and I don't know why I should trouble
my head about this loyal lady. I suppose that's the way
women get on in the world.''

  I felt convinced that he was no proper person to be a
messenger to headquarters. He struck me as altogether
untrustworthy and perhaps not quite sane. This was
confirmed by him saying suddenly with no visible connection
and as if it had been forced from him by some
agonizing process: ``I was a boy once,'' and then stopping
dead short with a smile. He had a smile that frightened
one by its association of malice and anguish.

  ``Will you have anything more to eat?'' I asked.

  He declined dully. He had had enough. But he
drained the last of a bottle into his glass and accepted a
cigar which I offered him. While he was lighting it I
had a sort of confused impression that he wasn't such a
stranger to me as I had assumed he was; and yet, on the
other hand, I was perfectly certain I had never seen him
before. Next moment I felt that I could have knocked
him down if he hadn't looked so amazingly unhappy,
while he came out with the astounding question: ``Se<n~>or,
have you ever been a lover in your young days?''

  ``What do you mean?'' I asked. ``How old do you
think I am?''

  ``That's true,'' he said, gazing at me in a way in which
the damned gaze out of their cauldrons of boiling pitch
at some soul walking scot free in the place of torment.

  ``It's true, you don't seem to have anything on your
mind.'' He assumed an air of ease, throwing an arm
over the back of his chair and blowing the smoke through
the gash of his twisted red mouth. ``Tell me,'' he said,
``between men, you know, has this wonderful celebrity---
what does she call herself? How long has she been your
mistress?''

  I reflected rapidly that if I knocked him over, chair
and all, by a sudden blow from the shoulder it would
bring about infinite complications beginning with a visit
to the Commissaire de Police on night-duty, and ending
in God knows what scandal and disclosures of political
kind; because there was no telling what, or how much,
this outrageous brute might choose to say and how
many people he might not involve in a most undesirable
publicity. He was smoking his cigar with a poignantly
mocking air and not even looking at me. One can't hit
like that a man who isn't even looking at one; and then,
just as I was looking at him swinging his leg with a caustic
smile and stony eyes, I felt sorry for the creature. It
was only his body that was there in that chair. It was
manifest to me that his soul was absent in some hell of
its own. At that moment I attained the knowledge of
who it was I had before me. This was the man of whom
both Do<n~>a Rita and Rose were so much afraid. It remained
then for me to look after him for the night and
then arrange with Baron H. that he should be sent away
the very next day---and anywhere but to Tolosa. Yes,
evidently, I mustn't lose sight of him. I proposed in the
calmest tone that we should go on where he could get his
much-needed rest. He rose with alacrity, picked up his
little hand-bag, and, walking out before me, no doubt
looked a very ordinary person to all eyes but mine. It
was then past eleven, not much, because we had not been
in that restaurant quite an hour, but the routine of the
town's night-life being upset during the Carnival the
usual row of fiacres outside the Maison Dor<e'>e was not
there; in fact, there were very few carriages about. Perhaps
the coachmen had assumed Pierrot costumes and
were rushing about the streets on foot yelling with the
rest of the population. ``We will have to walk,'' I said
after a while.---``Oh, yes, let us walk,'' assented Se<n~>or
Ortega, ``or I will be frozen here.'' It was like a plaint
of unutterable wretchedness. I had a fancy that all his
natural heat had abandoned his limbs and gone to his
brain. It was otherwise with me; my head was cool but
I didn't find the night really so very cold. We stepped
out briskly side by side. My lucid thinking was, as it
were, enveloped by the wide shouting of the consecrated
Carnival gaiety. I have heard many noises since, but
nothing that gave me such an intimate impression of the
savage instincts hidden in the breast of mankind; these
yells of festivity suggested agonizing fear, rage of murder,
ferocity of lust, and the irremediable joylessness of human
condition: yet they were emitted by people who were
convinced that they were amusing themselves supremely,
traditionally, with the sanction of ages, with the approval
of their conscience---and no mistake about it whatever!
Our appearance, the soberness of our gait made us conspicuous.
Once or twice, by common inspiration, masks
rushed forward and forming a circle danced round us
uttering discordant shouts of derision; for we were an
outrage to the peculiar proprieties of the hour, and besides
we were obviously lonely and defenceless. On those
occasions there was nothing for it but to stand still till
the flurry was over. My companion, however, would
stamp his feet with rage, and I must admit that I myself
regretted not having provided for our wearing a couple
of false noses, which would have been enough to placate
the just resentment of those people. We might have
also joined in the dance, but for some reason or other it
didn't occur to us; and I heard once a high, clear woman's
voice stigmatizing us for a ``species of swelled heads''
(_esp<e`>ce d'enfl<e'>s_). We proceeded sedately, my companion
muttered with rage, and I was able to resume my thinking.
It was based on the deep persuasion that the man at my
side was insane with quite another than Carnivalesque
lunacy which comes on at one stated time of the year. He
was fundamentally mad, though not perhaps completely;
which of course made him all the greater, I won't say
danger but, nuisance.

  I remember once a young doctor expounding the theory
that most catastrophes in family circles, surprising episodes
in public affairs and disasters in private life, had their
origin in the fact that the world was full of half-mad
people. He asserted that they were the real majority.
When asked whether he considered himself as belonging
to the majority, he said frankly that he didn't think
so; unless the folly of voicing this view in a company,
so utterly unable to appreciate all its horror, could be
regarded as the first symptom of his own fate. We
shouted down him and his theory, but there is no doubt
that it had thrown a chill on the gaiety of our gathering.

  We had now entered a quieter quarter of the town and
Se<n~>or Ortega had ceased his muttering. For myself I
had not the slightest doubt of my own sanity. It was
proved to me by the way I could apply my intelligence
to the problem of what was to be done with Se<n~>or Ortega.
Generally, he was unfit to be trusted with any mission
whatever. The unstability of his temper was sure to
get him into a scrape. Of course carrying a letter to
Headquarters was not a very complicated matter; and
as to that I would have trusted willingly a properly
trained dog. My private letter to Do<n~>a Rita, the wonderful,
the unique letter of farewell, I had given up for the
present. Naturally I thought of the Ortega problem
mainly in the terms of Do<n~>a Rita's safety. Her image
presided at every council, at every conflict of my mind,
and dominated every faculty of my senses. It floated
before my eyes, it touched my elbow, it guarded my
right side and my left side; my ears seemed to catch the
sound of her footsteps behind me, she enveloped me with
passing whiffs of warmth and perfume, with filmy touches
of the hair on my face. She penetrated me, my head
was full of her . . . And his head, too, I thought suddenly
with a side glance at my companion. He walked quietly
with hunched-up shoulders carrying his little hand-bag
and he looked the most commonplace figure imaginable.

  Yes. There was between us a most horrible fellowship
the association of his crazy torture with the sublime suffering
of my passion. We hadn't been a quarter of an
hour together when that woman had surged up fatally
between us; between this miserable wretch and myself.
We were haunted by the same image. But I was sane!
I was sane! Not because I was certain that the fellow
must not be allowed to go to Tolosa, but because I was
perfectly alive to the difficulty of stopping him from
going there, since the decision was absolutely in the
hands of Baron H.

  If I were to go early in the morning and tell that fat,
bilious man: ``Look here, your Ortega's mad,'' he would
certainly think at once that I was, get very frightened,
and . . . one couldn't tell what course he would take.
He would eliminate me somehow out of the affair. And
yet I could not let the fellow proceed to where Do<n~>a Rita
was, because, obviously, he had been molesting her, had
filled her with uneasiness and even alarm, was an unhappy
element and a disturbing influence in her life---
incredible as the thing appeared! I couldn't let him go
on to make himself a worry and a nuisance, drive her out
from a town in which she wished to be (for whatever
reason) and perhaps start some explosive scandal. And
that girl Rose seemed to fear something graver even than
a scandal. But if I were to explain the matter fully to
H. he would simply rejoice in his heart. Nothing would
please him more than to have Do<n~>a Rita driven out of
Tolosa. What a relief from his anxieties (and his wife's,
too); and if I were to go further, if I even went so far as
to hint at the fears which Rose had not been able to conceal
from me, why then---I went on thinking coldly
with a stoical rejection of the most elementary faith in
mankind's rectitude---why then, that accommodating
husband would simply let the ominous messenger have
his chance. He would see there only his natural anxieties
being laid to rest for ever. Horrible? Yes. But I could
not take the risk. In a twelvemonth I had travelled a
long way in my mistrust of mankind.

  We paced on steadily. I thought: ``How on earth am
I going to stop you?'' Had this arisen only a month
before, when I had the means at hand and Dominic to confide
in, I would have simply kidnapped the fellow. A
little trip to sea would not have done Se<n~>or Ortega any
harm; though no doubt it would have been abhorrent to
his feelings. But now I had not the means. I couldn't
even tell where my poor Dominic was hiding his diminished
head.

  Again I glanced at him sideways. I was the taller of
the two and as it happened I met in the light of the street
lamp his own stealthy glance directed up at me with an
agonized expression, an expression that made me fancy I
could see the man's very soul writhing in his body like an
impaled worm. In spite of my utter inexperience I had
some notion of the images that rushed into his mind at
the sight of any man who had approached Do<n~>a Rita.
It was enough to awaken in any human being a movement
of horrified compassion; but my pity went out not
to him but to Do<n~>a Rita. It was for her that I felt
sorry; I pitied her for having that damned soul on her
track. I pitied her with tenderness and indignation, as
if this had been both a danger and a dishonour.

  I don't mean to say that those thoughts passed through
my head consciously. I had only the resultant, settled
feeling. I had, however, a thought, too. It came on me
suddenly, and I asked myself with rage and astonishment:
``Must I then kill that brute?'' There didn't
seem to be any alternative. Between him and Do<n~>a Rita
I couldn't hesitate. I believe I gave a slight laugh of
desperation. The suddenness of this sinister conclusion
had in it something comic and unbelievable. It loosened
my grip on my mental processes. A Latin tag came into
my head about the facile descent into the abyss. I
marvelled at its aptness, and also that it should have come
to me so pat. But I believe now that it was suggested
simply by the actual declivity of the street of the Consuls
which lies on a gentle slope. We had just turned the
corner. All the houses were dark and in a perspective of
complete solitude our two shadows dodged and wheeled
about our feet.

  ``Here we are,'' I said.

  He was an extraordinarily chilly devil. When we
stopped I could hear his teeth chattering again. I don't
know what came over me, I had a sort of nervous fit, was
incapable of finding my pockets, let alone the latchkey.
I had the illusion of a narrow streak of light on the wall
of the house as if it had been cracked. ``I hope we will
be able to get in,'' I murmured.

  Se<n~>or Ortega stood waiting patiently with his handbag,
like a rescued wayfarer. ``But you live in this
house, don't you?'' he observed.

  ``No,'' I said, without hesitation. I didn't know how
that man would behave if he were aware that I was staying
under the same roof. He was half mad. He might want
to talk all night, try crazily to invade my privacy. How
could I tell? Moreover, I wasn't so sure that I would
remain in the house. I had some notion of going out again
and walking up and down the street of the Consuls till
daylight. ``No, an absent friend lets me use . . . I
had that latchkey this morning . . . Ah! here it is.''

  I let him go in first. The sickly gas flame was there on
duty, undaunted, waiting for the end of the world to
come and put it out. I think that the black-and-white
hall surprised Ortega. I had closed the front door without
noise and stood for a moment listening, while he
glanced about furtively. There were only two other
doors in the hall, right and left. Their panels of ebony
were decorated with bronze applications in the centre.
The one on the left was of course Blunt's door. As the
passage leading beyond it was dark at the further end I
took Se<n~>or Ortega by the hand and led him along, unresisting,
like a child. For some reason or other I moved
on tip-toe and he followed my example. The light and
the warmth of the studio impressed him favourably; he
laid down his little bag, rubbed his hands together, and
produced a smile of satisfaction; but it was such a smile
as a totally ruined man would perhaps force on his lips,
or a man condemned to a short shrift by his doctor. I
begged him to make himself at home and said that I
would go at once and hunt up the woman of the house
who would make him up a bed on the big couch there. He
hardly listened to what I said. What were all those things
to him! He knew that his destiny was to sleep on a bed
of thorns, to feed on adders. But he tried to show a sort
of polite interest. He asked: ``What is this place?''

  ``It used to belong to a painter,'' I mumbled.

  ``Ah, your absent friend,'' he said, making a wry
mouth. ``I detest all those artists, and all those writers,
and all politicos who are thieves; and I would go even
farther and higher, laying a curse on all idle lovers of
women. You think perhaps I am a Royalist? No. If
there was anybody in heaven or hell to pray to I would
pray for a revolution---a red revolution everywhere.''

  ``You astonish me,'' I said, just to say something.

  ``No! But there are half a dozen people in the world
with whom I would like to settle accounts. One could
shoot them like partridges and no questions asked.
That's what revolution would mean to me.''

  ``It's a beautifully simple view,'' I said. ``I imagine
you are not the only one who holds it; but I really must
look after your comforts. You mustn't forget that we
have to see Baron H. early to-morrow morning.'' And I
went out quietly into the passage wondering in what part
of the house Therese had elected to sleep that night.
But, lo and behold, when I got to the foot of the stairs
there was Therese coming down from the upper regions
in her nightgown, like a sleep-walker. However, it wasn't
that, because, before I could exclaim, she vanished off
the first floor landing like a streak of white mist and
without the slightest sound. Her attire made it perfectly
clear that she could not have heard us coming in. In
fact, she must have been certain that the house was
empty, because she was as well aware as myself that the
Italian girls after their work at the opera were going to a
masked ball to dance for their own amusement, attended
of course by their conscientious father. But what
thought, need, or sudden impulse had driven Therese out
of bed like this was something I couldn't conceive.

  I didn't call out after her. I felt sure that she would
return. I went up slowly to the first floor and met her
coming down again, this time carrying a lighted candle.
She had managed to make herself presentable in an
extraordinarily short time.

  ``Oh, my dear young Monsieur, you have given me a
fright.''

  ``Yes. And I nearly fainted, too,'' I said. ``You
looked perfectly awful. What's the matter with you?
Are you ill?''

  She had lighted by then the gas on the landing and I
must say that I had never seen exactly that manner of
face on her before. She wriggled, confused and shifty-eyed,
before me; but I ascribed this behaviour to her
shocked modesty and without troubling myself any more
about her feelings I informed her that there was a Carlist
downstairs who must be put up for the night. Most
unexpectedly she betrayed a ridiculous consternation,
but only for a moment. Then she assumed at once that
I would give him hospitality upstairs where there was
a camp-bedstead in my dressing-room. I said:

  ``No. Give him a shake-down in the studio, where he
is now. It's warm in there. And remember! I charge
you strictly not to let him know that I sleep in this
house. In fact, I don't know myself that I will; I have
certain matters to attend to this very night. You will
also have to serve him his coffee in the morning. I will
take him away before ten o'clock.''

  All this seemed to impress her more than I had expected.
As usual when she felt curious, or in some other
way excited, she assumed a saintly, detached expression,
and asked:

  ``The dear gentleman is your friend, I suppose?''

  ``I only know he is a Spaniard and a Carlist,'' I said:
``and that ought to be enough for you.''

  Instead of the usual effusive exclamations she murmured:
``Dear me, dear me,'' and departed upstairs with
the candle to get together a few blankets and pillows, I
suppose. As for me I walked quietly downstairs on my
way to the studio. I had a curious sensation that I was
acting in a preordained manner, that life was not at all
what I had thought it to be, or else that I had been
altogether changed sometime during the day, and that I
was a different person from the man whom I remembered
getting out of my bed in the morning.

  Also feelings had altered all their values. The words,
too, had become strange. It was only the inanimate
surroundings that remained what they had always been.
For instance the studio.

  During my absence Se<n~>or Ortega had taken off his coat
and I found him as it were in the air, sitting in his shirt
sleeves on a chair which he had taken pains to place in
the very middle of the floor. I repressed an absurd
impulse to walk round him as though he had been some
sort of exhibit. His hands were spread over his knees
and he looked perfectly insensible. I don't mean strange,
or ghastly, or wooden, but just insensible---like an exhibit.
And that effect persisted even after he raised his black
suspicious eyes to my face. He lowered them almost at
once. It was very mechanical. I gave him up and
became rather concerned about myself. My thought was
that I had better get out of that before any more queer
notions came into my head. So I only remained long
enough to tell him that the woman of the house was
bringing down some bedding and that I hoped that he
would have a good night's rest. And directly I spoke it
struck me that this was the most extraordinary speech
that ever was addressed to a figure of that sort. He,
however, did not seem startled by it or moved in any
way. He simply said:

  ``Thank you.''

  In the darkest part of the long passage outside I met
Therese with her arms full of pillows and blankets.


			V

  Coming out of the bright light of the studio I didn't make
out Therese very distinctly. She, however, having groped
in dark cupboards, must have had her pupils sufficiently
dilated to have seen that I had my hat on my head. This
has its importance because after what I had said to her
upstairs it must have convinced her that I was going out
on some midnight business. I passed her without a word
and heard behind me the door of the studio close with
an unexpected crash. It strikes me now that under the
circumstances I might have without shame gone back to
listen at the keyhole. But truth to say the association
of events was not so clear in my mind as it may be to the
reader of this story. Neither were the exact connections
of persons present to my mind. And, besides, one doesn't
listen at a keyhole but in pursuance of some plan; unless
one is afflicted by a vulgar and fatuous curiosity. But
that vice is not in my character. As to plan, I had none.
I moved along the passage between the dead wall and
the black-and-white marble elevation of the staircase with
hushed footsteps, as though there had been a mortally
sick person somewhere in the house. And the only person
that could have answered to that description was Se<n~>or
Ortega. I moved on, stealthy, absorbed, undecided;
asking myself earnestly: ``What on earth am I going to
do with him?'' That exclusive preoccupation of my
mind was as dangerous to Se<n~>or Ortega as typhoid fever
would have been. It strikes me that this comparison is
very exact. People recover from typhoid fever, but
generally the chance is considered poor. This was precisely
his case. His chance was poor; though I had no more
animosity towards him than a virulent disease has against
the victim it lays low. He really would have nothing to
reproach me with; he had run up against me, unwittingly,
as a man enters an infected place, and now he was very
ill, very ill indeed. No, I had no plans against him. I
had only the feeling that he was in mortal danger.

  I believe that men of the most daring character (and
I make no claim to it) often do shrink from the logical
processes of thought. It is only the devil, they say, that
loves logic. But I was not a devil. I was not even a
victim of the devil. It was only that I had given up the
direction of my intelligence before the problem; or rather
that the problem had dispossessed my intelligence and
reigned in its stead side by side with a superstitious awe.
A dreadful order seemed to lurk in the darkest shadows
of life. The madness of that Carlist with the soul of a
Jacobin, the vile fears of Baron H., that excellent organizer
of supplies, the contact of their two ferocious stupidities,
and last, by a remote disaster at sea, my love brought into
direct contact with the situation: all that was enough to
make one shudder---not at the chance, but at the design.

  For it was my love that was called upon to act here,
and nothing else. And love which elevates us above
all safeguards, above restraining principles, above all
littlenesses of self-possession, yet keeps its feet always
firmly on earth, remains marvellously practical in its
suggestions.

  I discovered that however much I had imagined I had
given up Rita, that whatever agonies I had gone through,
my hope of her had never been lost. Plucked out,
stamped down, torn to shreds, it had remained with me
secret, intact, invincible. Before the danger of the situation
it sprang, full of life, up in arms---the undying child
of immortal love. What incited me was independent of
honour and compassion; it was the prompting of a love
supreme, practical, remorseless in its aim; it was the
practical thought that no woman need be counted as lost
for ever, unless she be dead!

  This excluded for the moment all considerations of ways
and means and risks and difficulties. Its tremendous
intensity robbed it of all direction and left me adrift in
the big black-and-white hall as on a silent sea. It was
not, properly speaking, irresolution. It was merely
hesitation as to the next immediate step, and that step
even of no great importance: hesitation merely as to the
best way I could spend the rest of the night. I didn't
think further forward for many reasons, more or less
optimistic, but mainly because I have no homicidal vein
in my composition. The disposition to gloat over homicide
was in that miserable creature in the studio, the potential
Jacobin; in that confounded buyer of agricultural produce,
the punctual employ<e'> of Hernandez Brothers, the
jealous wretch with an obscene tongue and an imagination
of the same kind to drive him mad. I thought of him
without pity but also without contempt. I reflected that
there were no means of sending a warning to Do<n~>a Rita
in Tolosa; for of course no postal communication existed
with the Headquarters. And moreover what would a
warning be worth in this particular case, supposing it
would reach her, that she would believe it, and that she
would know what to do? How could I communicate
to another that certitude which was in my mind, the
more absolute because without proofs that one could
produce?

  The last expression of Rose's distress rang again in my
ears: ``Madame has no friends. Not one!'' and I saw
Do<n~>a Rita's complete loneliness beset by all sorts of
insincerities, surrounded by pitfalls; her greatest dangers
within herself, in her generosity, in her fears, in her
courage, too. What I had to do first of all was to stop
that wretch at all costs. I became aware of a great
mistrust of Therese. I didn't want her to find me in the
hall, but I was reluctant to go upstairs to my rooms
from an unreasonable feeling that there I would be too
much out of the way; not sufficiently on the spot. There
was the alternative of a live-long night of watching outside,
before the dark front of the house. It was a most
distasteful prospect. And then it occurred to me that
Blunt's former room would be an extremely good place
to keep a watch from. I knew that room. When Henry
All<e`>gre gave the house to Rita in the early days (long
before he made his will) he had planned a complete renovation
and this room had been meant for the drawing-room.
Furniture had been made for it specially, upholstered
in beautiful ribbed stuff, made to order, of dull
gold colour with a pale blue tracery of arabesques and
oval medallions enclosing Rita's monogram, repeated on
the backs of chairs and sofas, and on the heavy curtains
reaching from ceiling to floor. To the same time belonged
the ebony and bronze doors, the silver statuette at the
foot of the stairs, the forged iron balustrade reproducing
right up the marble staircase Rita's decorative monogram
in its complicated design. Afterwards the work was
stopped and the house had fallen into disrepair. When
Rita devoted it to the Carlist cause a bed was put into
that drawing-room, just simply the bed. The room next
to that yellow salon had been in All<e`>gre's young days
fitted as a fencing-room containing also a bath, and a
complicated system of all sorts of shower and jet arrangements,
then quite up to date. That room was very large,
lighted from the top, and one wall of it was covered by
trophies of arms of all sorts, a choice collection of cold
steel disposed on a background of Indian mats and rugs:
Blunt used it as a dressing-room. It communicated by
a small door with the studio.

  I had only to extend my hand and make one step to
reach the magnificent bronze handle of the ebony door,
and if I didn't want to be caught by Therese there was
no time to lose. I made the step and extended the hand,
thinking that it would be just like my luck to find the
door locked. But the door came open to my push. In
contrast to the dark hall the room was most unexpectedly
dazzling to my eyes, as if illuminated _a giorno_ for a
reception. No voice came from it, but nothing could
have stopped me now. As I turned round to shut the
door behind me noiselessly I caught sight of a woman's
dress on a chair, of other articles of apparel scattered
about. The mahogany bed with a piece of light silk which
Therese found somewhere and used for a counterpane
was a magnificent combination of white and crimson
between the gleaming surfaces of dark wood; and the
whole room had an air of splendour with marble consoles,
gilt carvings, long mirrors and a sumptuous Venetian
lustre depending from the ceiling: a darkling mass of
icy pendants catching a spark here and there from the
candles of an eight-branched candelabra standing on a
little table near the head of a sofa which had been
dragged round to face the fireplace. The faintest possible
whiff of a familiar perfume made my head swim with its
suggestion.

  I grabbed the back of the nearest piece of furniture
and the splendour of marbles and mirrors, of cut crystals
and carvings, swung before my eyes in the golden mist
of walls and draperies round an extremely conspicuous
pair of black stockings thrown over a music stool which
remained motionless. The silence was profound. It was
like being in an enchanted place. Suddenly a voice began
to speak, clear, detached, infinitely touching in its calm
weariness.

  ``Haven't you tormented me enough to-day?'' it
said. My head was steady now but my heart began
to beat violently. I listened to the end without moving.

  ``Can't you make up your mind to leave me alone for
to-night?'' It pleaded with an accent of charitable
scorn.

  The penetrating quality of these tones which I had not
heard for so many, many days made my eyes run full of
tears. I guessed easily that the appeal was addressed to
the atrocious Therese. The speaker was concealed from
me by the high back of the sofa, but her apprehension
was perfectly justified. For was it not I who had turned
back Therese the pious, the insatiable, coming downstairs
in her nightgown to torment her sister some more? Mere
surprise at Do<n~>a Rita's presence in the house was enough
to paralyze me; but I was also overcome by an enormous
sense of relief, by the assurance of security for her and
for myself. I didn't even ask myself how she came there.
It was enough for me that she was not in Tolosa. I
could have smiled at the thought that all I had to do now
was to hasten the departure of that abominable lunatic---
for Tolosa: an easy task, almost no task at all. Yes, I
would have smiled, had not I felt outraged by the presence
of Se<n~>or Ortega under the same roof with Do<n~>a Rita.
The mere fact was repugnant to me, morally revolting;
so that I should have liked to rush at him and throw
him out into the street. But that was not to be done
for various reasons. One of them was pity. I was
suddenly at peace with all mankind, with all nature. I
felt as if I couldn't hurt a fly. The intensity of my
emotion sealed my lips. With a fearful joy tugging at
my heart I moved round the head of the couch without a
word.

  In the wide fireplace on a pile of white ashes the logs
had a deep crimson glow; and turned towards them
Do<n~>a Rita reclined on her side enveloped in the skins of
wild beasts like a charming and savage young chieftain
before a camp fire. She never even raised her eyes, giving
me the opportunity to contemplate mutely that adolescent,
delicately masculine head, so mysteriously feminine in
the power of instant seduction, so infinitely suave in its
firm design, almost childlike in the freshness of detail
altogether ravishing in the inspired strength of the modelling.
That precious head reposed in the palm of her
hand; the face was slightly flushed (with anger perhaps).
She kept her eyes obstinately fixed on the pages of a
book which she was holding with her other hand. I had
the time to lay my infinite adoration at her feet whose
white insteps gleamed below the dark edge of the fur out
of quilted blue silk bedroom slippers, embroidered with
small pearls. I had never seen them before; I mean the
slippers. The gleam of the insteps, too, for that matter.
I lost myself in a feeling of deep content, something like
a foretaste of a time of felicity which must be quiet or
it couldn't be eternal. I had never tasted such perfect
quietness before. It was not of this earth. I had gone
far beyond. It was as if I had reached the ultimate
wisdom beyond all dreams and all passions. She was
That which is to be contemplated to all Infinity.

  The perfect stillness and silence made her raise her
eyes at last, reluctantly, with a hard, defensive expression
which I had never seen in them before. And no wonder!
The glance was meant for Therese and assumed in self-defence.
For some time its character did not change
and when it did it turned into a perfectly stony
stare of a kind which I also had never seen before
She had never wished so much to be left in peace. She
had never been so astonished in her life. She had
arrived by the evening express only two hours before
Se<n~>or Ortega, had driven to the house, and after having
something to eat had become for the rest of the evening
the helpless prey of her sister who had fawned and scolded
and wheedled and threatened in a way that outraged all
Rita's feelings. Seizing this unexpected occasion Therese
had displayed a distracting versatility of sentiment:
rapacity, virtue, piety, spite, and false tenderness---while,
characteristically enough, she unpacked the dressing-bag,
helped the sinner to get ready for bed, brushed her hair,
and finally, as a climax, kissed her hands, partly by surprise
and partly by violence. After that she had retired
from the field of battle slowly, undefeated, still defiant,
firing as a last shot the impudent question: ``Tell me
only, have you made your will, Rita?'' To this poor
Do<n~>a Rita with the spirit of opposition strung to the
highest pitch answered: ``No, and I don't mean to''---
being under the impression that this was what her sister
wanted her to do. There can be no doubt, however, that
all Therese wanted was the information.

  Rita, much too agitated to expect anything but a
sleepless night, had not the courage to get into bed. She
thought she would remain on the sofa before the fire
and try to compose herself with a hook. As she had no
dressing-gown with her she put on her long fur coat over
her night-gown, threw some logs on the fire, and lay down.
She didn't hear the slightest noise of any sort till she
heard me shut the door gently. Quietness of movement
was one of Therese's accomplishments, and the harassed
heiress of the All<e`>gre millions naturally thought it was her
sister coming again to renew the scene. Her heart sank
within her. In the end she became a little frightened at
the long silence, and raised her eyes. She didn't believe
them for a long time. She concluded that I was a vision.
In fact, the first word which I heard her utter was a low,
awed ``No,'' which, though I understood its meaning,
chilled my blood like an evil omen.

  It was then that I spoke. ``Yes,'' I said, ``it's me that
you see,'' and made a step forward. She didn't start;
only her other hand flew to the edges of the fur coat,
gripping them together over her breast. Observing this
gesture I sat down in the nearest chair. The book she had
been reading slipped with a thump on the floor.

  ``How is it possible that you should be here?'' she
said, still in a doubting voice.

  ``I am really here,'' I said. ``Would you like to touch
my hand?''

  She didn't move at all; her fingers still clutched the
fur coat.

  ``What has happened?'

  ``It's a long story, but you may take it from me that
all is over. The tie between us is broken. I don't know
that it was ever very close. It was an external thing.
The true misfortune is that I have ever seen you.''

  This last phrase was provoked by an exclamation of
sympathy on her part. She raised herself on her elbow
and looked at me intently. ``All over,'' she murmured.

  ``Yes, we had to wreck the little vessel. It was awful.
I feel like a murderer. But she had to be killed.''

  ``Why?''

  ``Because I loved her too much. Don't you know that
love and death go very close together?''

  ``I could feel almost happy that it is all over, if you
hadn't had to lose your love. Oh, _amigo_ George, it was
a safe love for you.''

  ``Yes,'' I said. ``It was a faithful little vessel. She
would have saved us all from any plain danger. But this
was a betrayal. It was---never mind. All that's past.
The question is what will the next one be.''

  ``Why should it be that?''

  ``I don't know. Life seems but a series of betrayals.
There are so many kinds of them. This was a betrayed
plan, but one can betray confidence, and hope and-desire,
and the most sacred . . .''

  ``But what are you doing here?'' she interrupted.

  ``Oh, yes! The eternal why. Till a few hours ago I
didn't know what I was here for. And what are you
here for?'' I asked point blank and with a bitterness
she disregarded. She even answered my question quite
readily with many words out of which I could make very
little. I only learned that for at least five mixed reasons,
none of which impressed me profoundly, Do<n~>a Rita had
started at a moment's notice from Paris with nothing but
a dressing-bag, and permitting Rose to go and visit her
aged parents for two days, and then follow her mistress.
That girl of late had looked so perturbed and worried
that the sensitive Rita, fearing that she was tired of her
place, proposed to settle a sum of money on her which
would have enabled her to devote herself entirely to her
aged parents. And did I know what that extraordinary
girl said? She had said: ``Don't let Madame think that
I would be too proud to accept anything whatever from
her; but I can't even dream of leaving Madame. I believe
Madame has no friends. Not one.'' So instead of
a large sum of money Do<n~>a Rita gave the girl a kiss and
as she had been worried by several people who wanted
her to go to Tolosa she bolted down this way just to get
clear of all those busybodies. ``Hide from them,'' she
went on with ardour. ``Yes, I came here to hide,'' she
repeated twice as if delighted at last to have hit on that
reason among so many others. ``How could I tell that
you would be here?'' Then with sudden fire which only
added to the delight with which I had been watching the
play of her physiognomy she added:---``Why did you come
into this room?''

  She enchanted me. The ardent modulations of the
sound, the slight play of the beautiful lips, the still, deep
sapphire gleam in those long eyes inherited from the dawn
of ages and that seemed always to watch unimaginable
things, that underlying faint ripple of gaiety that played
under all her moods as though it had been a gift from
the high gods moved to pity for this lonely mortal, all
this within the four walls and displayed for me alone
gave me the sense of almost intolerable joy. The words
didn't matter. They had to be answered, of course.

  ``I came in for several reasons. One of them is that I
didn't know you were here.''

  ``Therese didn't tell you?''

  ``No.''

  ``Never talked to you about me?''

  I hesitated only for a moment. ``Never,'' I said. Then
I asked in my turn, ``Did she tell you I was here?''

  ``No,'' she said.

  ``It's very clear she did not mean us to come together
again.''

  ``Neither did I, my dear.''

  ``What do you mean by speaking like this, in this
tone, in these words? You seem to use them as if they
were a sort of formula. Am I a dear to you? Or is
anybody? . . . or everybody? . . .''

  She had been for some time raised on her elbow, but
then as if something had happened to her vitality she
sank down till her head rested again on the sofa cushion.

  ``Why do you try to hurt my feelings?'' she asked.

  ``For the same reason for which you call me dear at
the end of a sentence like that: for want of something
more amusing to do. You don't pretend to make me
believe that you do it for any sort of reason that a decent
person would confess to.''

  The colour had gone from her face; but a fit of wickedness
was on me and I pursued, ``What are the motives of
your speeches? What prompts your actions? On your
own showing your life seems to be a continuous running
away. You have just run away from Paris. Where will
you run to-morrow? What are you everlastingly running
from---or is it that you are running after something?
What is it? A man, a phantom---or some sensation that
you don't like to own to?''

  Truth to say, I was abashed by the silence which was
her only answer to this sally. I said to myself that I
would not let my natural anger, my just fury be disarmed
by any assumption of pathos or dignity. I suppose I was
really out of my mind and what in the middle ages would
have been called ``possessed'' by an evil spirit. I went
on enjoying my own villainy.

  ``Why aren't you in Tolosa? You ought to be in
Tolosa. Isn't Tolosa the proper field for your abilities,
for your sympathies, for your profusions, for your generosities---
the king without a crown, the man without a
fortune! But here there is nothing worthy of your
talents. No, there is no longer anything worth any sort
of trouble here. There isn't even that ridiculous Monsieur
George. I understand that the talk of the coast from
here to Cette is that Monsieur George is drowned. Upon
my word I believe he is. And serve him right, too.
There's Therese, but I don't suppose that your love for
your sister . . .''

  ``For goodness' sake don't let her come in and find you
here.''

  Those words recalled me to myself, exorcised the evil
spirit by the mere enchanting power of the voice. They
were also impressive by their suggestion of something
practical, utilitarian, and remote from sentiment. The
evil spirit left me and I remained taken aback slightly.

  ``Well,'' I said, ``if you mean that you want me to
leave the room I will confess to you that I can't very
well do it yet. But I could lock both doors if you don't
mind that.''

  ``Do what you like as long as you keep her out. You
two together would be too much for me to-night. Why
don't you go and lock those doors? I have a feeling she
is on the prowl.''

  I got up at once saying, ``I imagine she has gone to
bed by this time.'' I felt absolutely calm and responsible.
I turned the keys one after another so gently that I
couldn't hear the click of the locks myself. This done I
recrossed the room with measured steps, with downcast
eyes, and approaching the couch without raising them
from the carpet I sank down on my knees and leaned
my forehead on its edge. That penitential attitude had
but little remorse in it. I detected no movement and
heard no sound from her. In one place a bit of the fur
coat touched my cheek softly, but no forgiving hand
came to rest on my bowed head. I only breathed deeply
the faint scent of violets, her own particular fragrance
enveloping my body, penetrating my very heart with an
inconceivable intimacy, bringing me closer to her than
the closest embrace, and yet so subtle that I sensed her
existence in me only as a great, glowing, indeterminate
tenderness, something like the evening light disclosing
after the white passion of the day infinite depths in the
colours of the sky and an unsuspected soul of peace in
the protean forms of life. I had not known such quietness
for months; and I detected in myself an immense
fatigue, a longing to remain where I was without changing
my position to the end of time. Indeed to remain
seemed to me a complete solution for all the problems
that life presents---even as to the very death itself.

  Only the unwelcome reflection that this was impossible
made me get up at last with a sigh of deep grief at the
end of the dream. But I got up without despair. She
didn't murmur, she didn't stir. There was something
august in the stillness of the room. It was a strange
peace which she shared with me in this unexpected
shelter full of disorder in its neglected splendour. What
troubled me was the sudden, as it were material, consciousness
of time passing as water flows. It seemed to
me that it was only the tenacity of my sentiment that
held that woman's body, extended and tranquil above
the flood. But when I ventured at last to look at her
face I saw her flushed, her teeth clenched---it was visible
---her nostrils dilated, and in her narrow, level-glancing
eyes a look of inward and frightened ecstasy. The edges
of the fur coat had fallen open and I was moved to turn
away. I had the same impression as on the evening we
parted that something had happened which I did not
understand; only this time I had not touched her at all.
I really didn't understand. At the slightest whisper I
would now have gone out without a murmur, as though
that emotion had given her the right to be obeyed. But
there was no whisper; and for a long time I stood leaning
on my arm, looking into the fire and feeling distinctly
between the four walls of that locked room the unchecked
time flow past our two stranded personalities.

  And suddenly she spoke. She spoke in that voice that
was so profoundly moving without ever being sad, a little
wistful perhaps and always the supreme expression of her
grace. She asked as if nothing had happened:

  ``What are you thinking of, _amigo?_''

  I turned about. She was lying on her side, tranquil
above the smooth flow of time, again closely wrapped up
in her fur, her head resting on the old-gold sofa cushion
bearing like everything else in that room the decoratively
enlaced letters of her monogram; her face a little pale
now, with the crimson lobe of her ear under the tawny mist
of her loose hair, the lips a little parted, and her glance
of melted sapphire level and motionless, darkened by
fatigue.

  ``Can I think of anything but you?'' I murmured,
taking a seat near the foot of the couch. ``Or rather it
isn't thinking, it is more like the consciousness of you
always being present in me, complete to the last hair,
to the faintest shade of expression, and that not only
when we are apart but when we are together, alone, as
close as this. I see you now lying on this couch but that
is only the insensible phantom of the real you that is in
me. And it is the easier for me to feel this because that
image which others see and call by your name---how am
I to know that it is anything else but an enchanting
mist? You have always eluded me except in one or two
moments which seem still more dream-like than the rest.
Since I came into this room you have done nothing to
destroy my conviction of your unreality apart from myself.
You haven't offered me your hand to touch. Is it
because you suspect that apart from me you are but a
mere phantom, and that you fear to put it to the test?''

  One of her hands was under the fur and the other
under her cheek. She made no sound. She didn't offer
to stir. She didn't move her eyes, not even after I had
added after waiting for a while,

  ``Just what I expected. You are a cold illusion.''

  She smiled mysteriously, right away from me, straight
at the fire, and that was all.



			VI

  I had a momentary suspicion that I had said something
stupid. Her smile amongst many other things seemed
to have meant that, too. And I answered it with a certain
resignation

  ``Well, I don't know that you are so much mist. I
remember once hanging on to you like a drowning man . . .
But perhaps I had better not speak of this. It wasn't
so very long ago, and you may . . .''

  ``I don't mind. Well . . .''

  ``Well, I have kept an impression of great solidity.
I'll admit that. A woman of granite.''

  ``A doctor once told me that I was made to last for
ever,'' she said.

  ``But essentially it's the same thing,'' I went on.
``Granite, too, is insensible.''

  I watched her profile against the pillow and there came
on her face an expression I knew well when with an indignation
full of suppressed laughter she used to throw
at me the word ``Imbecile.'' I expected it to come, but
it didn't come. I must say, though, that I was swimmy
in my head and now and then had a noise as of the sea
in my ears, so I might not have heard it. The woman of
granite, built to last for ever, continued to look at the
glowing logs which made a sort of fiery ruin on the white
pile of ashes. ``I will tell you how it is,'' I said. ``When
I have you before my eyes there is such a projection of
my whole being towards you that I fail to see you distinctly.
It was like that from the beginning. I may
say that I never saw you distinctly till after we had
parted and I thought you had gone from my sight for
ever. It was then that you took body in my imagination
and that my mind seized on a definite form of you for
all its adorations---for its profanations, too. Don't imagine
me grovelling in spiritual abasement before a mere
image. I got a grip on you that nothing can shake now.''

  ``Don't speak like this,'' she said. ``It's too much for
me. And there is a whole long night before us.''

  ``You don't think that I dealt with you sentimentally
enough perhaps? But the sentiment was there; as clear
a flame as ever burned on earth from the most remote
ages before that eternal thing which is in you, which is
your heirloom. And is it my fault that what I had to
give was real flame, and not a mystic's incense? It is
neither your fault nor mine. And now whatever we say
to each other at night or in daylight, that sentiment must
be taken for granted. It will be there on the day I die
---when you won't be there.''

  She continued to look fixedly at the red embers; and
from her lips that hardly moved came the quietest possible
whisper ``Nothing would be easier than to die for
you.''

  ``Really,'' I cried. ``And you expect me perhaps after
this to kiss your feet in a transport of gratitude while I
hug the pride of your words to my breast. But as it
happens there is nothing in me but contempt for this
sublime declaration. How dare you offer me this charlatanism
of passion? What has it got to do between you
and me who are the only two beings in the world that
may safely say that we have no need of shams between
ourselves? Is it possible that you are a charlatan at
heart? Not from egoism, I admit, but from some sort of
fear. Yet, should you be sincere, then---listen well to
me---I would never forgive you. I would visit your
grave every day to curse you for an evil thing.''

  ``Evil thing,'' she echoed softly.

  ``Would you prefer to be a sham---that one could forget?''

  ``You will never forget me,'' she said in the same tone
at the glowing embers. ``Evil or good. But, my dear, I
feel neither an evil nor a sham. I have got to be what I
am, and that, _amigo,_ is not so easy; because I may be
simple, but like all those on whom there is no peace I am
not One. No, I am not One!''

  ``You are all the women in the world,'' I whispered
bending over her. She didn't seem to be aware of anything
and only spoke---always to the glow.

  ``If I were that I would say: God help them then.
But that would be more appropriate for Therese. For
me, I can only give them my infinite compassion. I
have too much reverence in me to invoke the name of a
God of whom clever men have robbed me a long time
ago. How could I help it? For the talk was clever and
---and I had a mind. And I am also, as Therese says,
naturally sinful. Yes, my dear, I may be naturally
wicked but I am not evil and I could die for you.''

  ``You!'' I said. ``You are afraid to die.''

  ``Yes. But not for you.''

  The whole structure of glowing logs fell down, raising
a small turmoil of white ashes and sparks. The tiny
crash seemed to wake her up thoroughly. She turned
her head upon the cushion to look at me.

  ``It's a very extraordinary thing, we two coming together
like this,'' she said with conviction. ``You coming
in without knowing I was here and then telling me
that you can't very well go out of the room. That sounds
funny. I wouldn't have been angry if you had said that
you wouldn't. It would have hurt me. But nobody ever
paid much attention to my feelings. Why do you smile
like this?''

  ``At a thought. Without any charlatanism of passion
I am able to tell you of something to match your devotion.
I was not afraid for your sake to come within a
hair's breadth of what to all the world would have been
a squalid crime. Note that you and I are persons of
honour. And there might have been a criminal trial at
the end of it for me. Perhaps the scaffold.''

  ``Do you say these horrors to make me tremble?''

  ``Oh, you needn't tremble. There shall be no crime.
I need not risk the scaffold, since now you are safe. But
I entered this room meditating resolutely on the ways of
murder, calculating possibilities and chances without the
slightest compunction. It's all over now. It was all over
directly I saw you here, but it had been so near that I
shudder yet.''

  She must have been very startled because for a time
she couldn't speak. Then in a faint voice:

  ``For me! For me!'' she faltered out twice.

  ``For you---or for myself? Yet it couldn't have been
selfish. What would it have been to me that you remained
in the world? I never expected to see you again.
I even composed a most beautiful letter of farewell. Such
a letter as no woman have ever received.''

  Instantly she shot out a hand towards me. The edges
of the fur cloak fell apart. A wave of the faintest possible
scent floated into my nostrils.

  ``Let me have it,'' she said imperiously.

  ``You can't have it. It's all in my head. No woman
will read it. I suspect it was something that could never
have been written. But what a farewell! And now I
suppose we shall say good-bye without even a handshake.
But you are safe! Only I must ask you not to come out
of this room till I tell you you may.''

  I was extremely anxious that Se<n~>or Ortega should
never even catch a glimpse of Do<n~>a Rita, never guess
how near he had been to her. I was extremely anxious
the fellow should depart for Tolosa and get shot in
a ravine; or go to the Devil in his own way, as long as he
lost the track of Do<n~>a Rita completely. He then, probably,
would get mad and get shut up, or else get cured,
forget all about it, and devote himself to his vocation,
whatever it was---keep a shop and grow fat. All this
flashed through my mind in an instant and while I was
still dazzled by those comforting images, the voice of
Do<n~>a Rita pulled me up with a jerk.

  ``You mean not out of the house?''

  ``No, I mean not out of this room,'' I said with some
embarrassment.

  ``What do you mean? Is there something in the house
then? This is most extraordinary! Stay in this room?
And you, too, it seems? Are you also afraid for yourself?''

  ``I can't even give you an idea how afraid I was. I
am not so much now. But you know very well, Do<n~>a
Rita, that I never carry any sort of weapon in my pocket.''

  ``Why don't you, then?'' she asked in a flash of
scorn which bewitched me so completely for an instant
that I couldn't even smile at it.

  ``Because if I am unconventionalized I am an old
European,'' I murmured gently. ``No, _Excellentissima,_
I shall go through life without as much as a switch in
my hand. It's no use you being angry. Adapting to
this great moment some words you've heard before: I
am like that. Such is my character!''

  Do<n~>a Rita frankly stared at me---a most unusual expression
for her to have. Suddenly she sat up.

  ``Don George,'' she said with lovely animation, ``I insist
upon knowing who is in my house.''

  ``You insist! . . . But Therese says it is her
house.''

  Had there been anything handy, such as a cigarette
box, for instance, it would have gone sailing through the
air spouting cigarettes as it went. Rosy all over, cheeks,
neck, shoulders, she seemed lighted up softly from inside
like a beautiful transparency. But she didn't raise her
voice.

  ``You and Therese have sworn my ruin. If you don't
tell me what you mean I will go outside and shout up the
stairs to make her come down. I know there is no one
but the three of us in the house.''

  ``Yes, three; but not counting my Jacobin. There is a
Jacobin in the house.''

  ``A Jac . . .! Oh, George, is this the time to jest?''
she began in persuasive tones when a faint but peculiar
noise stilled her lips as though they had been suddenly
frozen. She became quiet all over instantly. I, on the
contrary, made an involuntary movement before I, too,
became as still as death. We strained our ears; but
that peculiar metallic rattle had been so slight and the
silence now was so perfect that it was very difficult to
believe one's senses. Do<n~>a Rita looked inquisitively at
me. I gave her a slight nod. We remained looking into
each other's eyes while we listened and listened till the
silence became unbearable. Do<n~>a Rita whispered composedly:
``Did you hear?''

  ``I am asking myself . . . I almost think I didn't.''

  ``Don't shuffle with me. It was a scraping noise.''

  ``Something fell.''

  ``Something! What thing? What are the things that
fall by themselves? Who is that man of whom you
spoke? Is there a man?''

  ``No doubt about it whatever. I brought him here
myself.''

  ``What for?''

  ``Why shouldn't I have a Jacobin of my own? Haven't
you one, too? But mine is a different problem from that
white-haired humbug of yours. He is a genuine article.
There must be plenty like him about. He has scores to
settle with half a dozen people, he says, and he clamours
for revolutions to give him a chance.''

  ``But why did you bring him here?''

  ``I don't know---from sudden affection . . .''

  All this passed in such low tones that we seemed to
make out the words more by watching each other's lips
than through our sense of hearing. Man is a strange
animal. I didn't care what I said. All I wanted was to
keep her in her pose, excited and still, sitting up with her
hair loose, softly glowing, the dark brown fur making a
wonderful contrast with the white lace on her breast.
All I was thinking of was that she was adorable and
too lovely for words! I cared for nothing but that sublimely
<ae>sthetic impression. It summed up all life, all
joy, all poetry! It had a divine strain. I am certain
that I was not in my right mind. I suppose I was not
quite sane. I am convinced that at that moment of the
four people in the house it was Do<n~>a Rita who upon the
whole was the most sane. She observed my face and I
am sure she read there something of my inward exaltation.
She knew what to do. In the softest possible tone
and hardly above her breath she commanded: ``George,
come to yourself.''

  Her gentleness had the effect of evening light. I was
soothed. Her confidence in her own power touched me
profoundly. I suppose my love was too great for madness
to get hold of me. I can't say that I passed to a
complete calm, but I became slightly ashamed of myself.
I whispered:

  ``No, it was not from affection, it was for the love of
you that I brought him here. That imbecile H. was
going to send him to Tolosa.''

  ``That Jacobin!'' Do<n~>a Rita was immensely surprised,
as she might well have been. Then resigned to the incomprehensible:
``Yes,'' she breathed out, ``what did
you do with him?''

  ``I put him to bed in the studio.''

  How lovely she was with the effort of close attention
depicted in the turn of her head and in her whole face
honestly trying to approve. ``And then?'' she inquired.

  ``Then I came in here to face calmly the necessity of
doing away with a human life. I didn't shirk it for a
moment. That's what a short twelvemonth has brought
me to. Don't think I am reproaching you, O blind force!
You are justified because you are. Whatever had to
happen you would not even have heard of it.''

  Horror darkened her marvellous radiance. Then her
face became utterly blank with the tremendous effort to
understand. Absolute silence reigned in the house. It
seemed to me that everything had been said now that
mattered in the world; and that the world itself had
reached its ultimate stage, had reached its appointed end
of an eternal, phantom-like silence. Suddenly Do<n~>a Rita
raised a warning finger. I had heard nothing and shook
my head; but she nodded hers and murmured excitedly,

  ``Yes, yes, in the fencing-room, as before.''

  In the same way I answered her: ``Impossible! The
door is locked and Therese has the key.'' She asked
then in the most cautious manner,

  ``Have you seen Therese to-night?''

  ``Yes,'' I confessed without misgiving. ``I left her
making up the fellow's bed when I came in here.''

  ``The bed of the Jacobin?'' she said in a peculiar tone
as if she were humouring a lunatic.

  ``I think I had better tell you he is a Spaniard---that
he seems to know you from early days. . . .'' I glanced
at her face, it was extremely tense, apprehensive. For
myself I had no longer any doubt as to the man and I
hoped she would reach the correct conclusion herself.
But I believe she was too distracted and worried to think
consecutively. She only seemed to feel some terror in
the air. In very pity I bent down and whispered carefully
near her ear, ``His name is Ortega.''

  I expected some effect from that name but I never
expected what happened. With the sudden, free, spontaneous
agility of a young animal she leaped off the
sofa, leaving her slippers behind, and in one bound
reached almost the middle of the room. The vigour, the
instinctive precision of that spring, were something amazing.
I just escaped being knocked over. She landed
lightly on her bare feet with a perfect balance, without
the slightest suspicion of swaying in her instant immobility.
It lasted less than a second, then she spun round
distractedly and darted at the first door she could see.
My own agility was just enough to enable me to grip the
back of the fur coat and then catch her round the body
before she could wriggle herself out of the sleeves. She
was muttering all the time, ``No, no, no.'' She abandoned
herself to me just for an instant during which I
got her back to the middle of the room. There she attempted
to free herself and I let her go at once. With
her face very close to mine, but apparently not knowing
what she was looking at she repeated again twice, ``No---
No,'' with an intonation which might well have brought
dampness to my eyes but which only made me regret
that I didn't kill the honest Ortega at sight. Suddenly
Do<n~>a Rita swung round and seizing her loose hair with
both hands started twisting it up before one of the sumptuous
mirrors. The wide fur sleeves slipped down her
white arms. In a brusque movement like a downward stab
she transfixed the whole mass of tawny glints and sparks
with the arrow of gold which she perceived lying there,
before her, on the marble console. Then she sprang away
from the glass muttering feverishly, ``Out---out---out
of this house,'' and trying with an awful, senseless stare
to dodge past me who had put myself in her way with
open arms. At last I managed to seize her by the shoulders
and in the extremity of my distress I shook her roughly.
If she hadn't quieted down then I believe my heart would
have broken. I spluttered right into her face: ``I won't
let you. Here you stay.'' She seemed to recognize me
at last, and suddenly still, perfectly firm on her white
feet, she let her arms fall and, from an abyss of desolation,
whispered, ``O! George! No! No! Not Ortega.''

  There was a passion of mature grief in this tone of
appeal. And yet she remained as touching and helpless
as a distressed child. It had all the simplicity and depth
of a child's emotion. It tugged at one's heart-strings in
the same direct way. But what could one do? How
could one soothe her? It was impossible to pat her on
the head, take her on the knee, give her a chocolate or
show her a picture-book. I found myself absolutely
without resource. Completely at a loss.

  ``Yes, Ortega. Well, what of it?'' I whispered with
immense assurance.


			VII

  My brain was in a whirl. I am safe to say that at this
precise moment there was nobody completely sane in the
house. Setting apart Therese and Ortega, both in the
grip of unspeakable passions, all the moral economy of
Do<n~>a Rita had gone to pieces. Everything was gone
except her strong sense of life with all its implied menaces.
The woman was a mere chaos of sensations and vitality.
I, too, suffered most from inability to get hold of some
fundamental thought. The one on which I could best
build some hopes was the thought that, of course, Ortega
did not know anything. I whispered this into the ear of
Do<n~>a Rita, into her precious, her beautifully shaped ear.

  But she shook her head, very much like an inconsolable
child and very much with a child's complete pessimism
she murmured, ``Therese has told him.''

  The words, ``Oh, nonsense,'' never passed my lips,
because I could not cheat myself into denying that there
had been a noise; and that the noise was in the fencing-room.
I knew that room. There was nothing there that
by the wildest stretch of imagination could be conceived
as falling with that particular sound. There was a table
with a tall strip of looking-glass above it at one end;
but since Blunt took away his campaigning kit there was
no small object of any sort on the console or anywhere
else that could have been jarred off in some mysterious
manner. Along one of the walls there was the whole
complicated apparatus of solid brass pipes, and quite close
to it an enormous bath sunk into the floor. The greatest
part of the room along its whole length was covered with
matting and had nothing else but a long, narrow leather-upholstered
bench fixed to the wall. And that was all.
And the door leading to the studio was locked. And
Therese had the key. And it flashed on my mind, independently
of Do<n~>a Rita's pessimism, by the force of
personal conviction, that, of course, Therese would tell
him. I beheld the whole succession of events perfectly
connected and tending to that particular conclusion.
Therese would tell him! I could see the contrasted heads
of those two formidable lunatics close together in a dark
mist of whispers compounded of greed, piety, and jealousy,
plotting in a sense of perfect security as if under the very
wing of Providence. So at least Therese would think.
She could not be but under the impression that (providentially)
I had been called out for the rest of the night.

  And now there was one sane person in the house, for I
had regained complete command of my thoughts. Working
in a logical succession of images they showed me at
last as clearly as a picture on a wall, Therese pressing
with fervour the key into the fevered palm of the rich,
prestigious, virtuous cousin, so that he should go and urge
his self-sacrificing offer to Rita, and gain merit before Him
whose Eye sees all the actions of men. And this image
of those two with the key in the studio seemed to me a
most monstrous conception of fanaticism, of a perfectly
horrible aberration. For who could mistake the state
that made Jos<e'> Ortega the figure he was, inspiring both
pity and fear? I could not deny that I understood, not
the full extent but the exact nature of his suffering.
Young as I was I had solved for myself that grotesque
and sombre personality. His contact with me, the
personal contact with (as he thought) one of the actual
lovers of that woman who brought to him as a boy the
curse of the gods, had tipped over the trembling scales.
No doubt I was very near death in the ``grand salon''
of the Maison Dor<e'>e, only that his torture had gone too
far. It seemed to me that I ought to have heard his very
soul scream while we were seated at supper. But in a
moment he had ceased to care for me. I was nothing.
To the crazy exaggeration of his jealousy I was but one
amongst a hundred thousand. What was my death?
Nothing. All mankind had possessed that woman. I
knew what his wooing of her would be: Mine---or Dead.

  All this ought to have had the clearness of noon-day,
even to the veriest idiot that ever lived; and Therese was,
properly speaking, exactly that. An idiot. A one-ideaed
creature. Only the idea was complex; therefore it was
impossible really to say what she wasn't capable of. This
was what made her obscure processes so awful. She had
at times the most amazing perceptions. Who could tell
where her simplicity ended and her cunning began? She
had also the faculty of never forgetting any fact bearing
upon her one idea; and I remembered now that the
conversation with me about the will had produced on
her an indelible impression of the Law's surprising justice.
Recalling her naive admiration of the ``just'' law that
required no ``paper'' from a sister, I saw her casting
loose the raging fate with a sanctimonious air. And
Therese would naturally give the key of the fencing-room
to her dear, virtuous, grateful, disinterested cousin, to
that damned soul with delicate whiskers, because she
would think it just possible that Rita might have locked
the door leading from her room into the hall; whereas
there was no earthly reason, not the slightest likelihood,
that she would bother about the other. Righteousness
demanded that the erring sister should be taken unawares.

  All the above is the analysis of one short moment.
Images are to words like light to sound---incomparably
swifter. And all this was really one flash of light through
my mind. A comforting thought succeeded it: that both
doors were locked and that really there was no danger.

  However, there had been that noise---the why and the
how of it? Of course in the dark he might have fallen
into the bath, but that wouldn't have been a faint noise.
It wouldn't have been a rattle. There was absolutely
nothing he could knock over. He might have dropped a
candle-stick if Therese had left him her own. That was
possible, but then those thick mats---and then, anyway,
why should he drop it? and, hang it all, why shouldn't he
have gone straight on and tried the door? I had suddenly
a sickening vision of the fellow crouching at the key-hole,
listening, listening, listening, for some movement or sigh
of the sleeper he was ready to tear away from the world,
alive or dead. I had a conviction that he was still listening.
Why? Goodness knows! He may have been only gloating
over the assurance that the night was long and that
he had all these hours to himself.

  I was pretty certain that he could have heard nothing
of our whispers, the room was too big for that and the
door too solid. I hadn't the same confidence in the
efficiency of the lock. Still! . . . Guarding my lips with
my hand I urged Do<n~>a Rita to go back to the sofa. She
wouldn't answer me and when I got hold of her arm I
discovered that she wouldn't move. She had taken root
in that thick-pile Aubusson carpet; and she was so rigidly
still all over that the brilliant stones in the shaft of the
arrow of gold, with the six candles at the head of the
sofa blazing full on them, emitted no sparkle.

  I was extremely anxious that she shouldn't betray herself.
I reasoned, save the mark, as a psychologist. I
had no doubt that the man knew of her being there; but
he only knew it by hearsay. And that was bad enough.
I could not help feeling that if he obtained some evidence
for his senses by any sort of noise, voice, or movement,
his madness would gain strength enough to burst the lock.
I was rather ridiculously worried about the locks. A
horrid mistrust of the whole house possessed me. I saw
it in the light of a deadly trap. I had no weapon, I
couldn't say whether he had one or not. I wasn't afraid
of a struggle as far as I, myself, was concerned, but I
was afraid of it for Do<n~>a Rita. To be rolling at her feet,
locked in a literally tooth-and-nail struggle with Ortega
would have been odious. I wanted to spare her feelings,
just as I would have been anxious to save from any contact
with mud the feet of that goatherd of the mountains with
a symbolic face. I looked at her face. For immobility
it might have been a carving. I wished I knew how
to deal with that embodied mystery, to influence it, to
manage it. Oh, how I longed for the gift of authority!
In addition, since I had become completely sane, all my
scruples against laying hold of her had returned. I felt
shy and embarrassed. My eyes were fixed on the bronze
handle of the fencing-room door as if it were something
alive. I braced myself up against the moment when it
would move. This was what was going to happen next.
It would move very gently. My heart began to thump.
But I was prepared to keep myself as still as death and
I hoped Do<n~>a Rita would have sense enough to do the
same. I stole another glance at her face and at that
moment I heard the word: ``Beloved!'' form itself in
the still air of the room, weak, distinct, piteous, like the
last request of the dying.

  With great presence of mind I whispered into Do<n~>a
Rita's ear: ``Perfect silence!'' and was overjoyed to
discover that she had heard me, understood me; that
she even had command over her rigid lips. She answered
me in a breath (our cheeks were nearly touching): ``Take
me out of this house.''

  I glanced at all her clothing scattered about the room
and hissed forcibly the warning ``Perfect immobility'';
noticing with relief that she didn't offer to move, though
animation was returning to her and her lips had remained
parted in an awful, unintended effect of a smile. And I
don't know whether I was pleased when she, who was
not to be touched, gripped my wrist suddenly. It had
the air of being done on purpose because almost instantly
another: ``Beloved!'' louder, more agonized if possible,
got into the room and, yes, went home to my heart. It
was followed without any transition, preparation, or warning,
by a positively bellowed: ``Speak, perjured beast!''
which I felt pass in a thrill right through Do<n~>a Rita like
an electric shock, leaving her as motionless as before.

  Till he shook the door handle, which he did immediately
afterwards, I wasn't certain through which door he had
spoken. The two doors (in different walls) were rather
near each other. It was as I expected. He was in the
fencing-room, thoroughly aroused, his senses on the alert
to catch the slightest sound. A situation not to be trifled
with. Leaving the room was for us out of the question.
It was quite possible for him to dash round into the hall
before we could get clear of the front door. As to making
a bolt of it upstairs there was the same objection; and
to allow ourselves to be chased all over the empty house
by this maniac would have been mere folly. There was
no advantage in locking ourselves up anywhere upstairs
where the original doors and locks were much lighter. No,
true safety was in absolute stillness and silence, so that
even his rage should be brought to doubt at last and
die expended, or choke him before it died; I didn't care
which.

  For me to go out and meet him would have been stupid.
Now I was certain that he was armed. I had remembered
the wall in the fencing-room decorated with trophies of
cold steel in all the civilized and savage forms; sheaves of
assegais, in the guise of columns and grouped between
them stars and suns of choppers, swords, knives; from
Italy, from Damascus, from Abyssinia, from the ends of
the world. Ortega had only to make his barbarous choice.
I suppose he had got up on the bench, and fumbling about
amongst them must have brought one down, which, falling,
had produced that rattling noise. But in any case to go
to meet him would have been folly, because, after all, I
might have been overpowered (even with bare hands) and
then Do<n~>a Rita would have been left utterly defenceless.

  ``He will speak,'' came to me the ghostly, terrified
murmur of her voice. ``Take me out of the house before
he begins to speak.''

  ``Keep still,'' I whispered. ``He will soon get tired of
this.''

  ``You don't know him.''

  ``Oh, yes, I do. Been with him two hours.''

  At this she let go my wrist and covered her face with
her hands passionately. When she dropped them she had
the look of one morally crushed.

  ``What did he say to you?''

  ``He raved.''

  ``Listen to me. It was all true!''

  ``I daresay, but what of that?''

  These ghostly words passed between us hardly louder
than thoughts; but after my last answer she ceased and
gave me a searching stare, then drew in a long breath.
The voice on the other side of the door burst out with
an impassioned request for a little pity, just a little, and
went on begging for a few words, for two words, for one
word---one poor little word. Then it gave up, then repeated
once more, ``Say you are there, Rita. Say one
word, just one word. Say `yes.' Come! Just one little
yes.''

  ``You see,'' I said. She only lowered her eyelids over
the anxious glance she had turned on me.

  For a minute we could have had the illusion that he
had stolen away, unheard, on the thick mats. But I
don't think that either of us was deceived. The voice
returned, stammering words without connection, pausing
and faltering, till suddenly steadied it soared into impassioned
entreaty, sank to low, harsh tones, voluble, lofty
sometimes and sometimes abject. When it paused it left
us looking profoundly at each other.

  ``It's almost comic,'' I whispered.

  ``Yes. One could laugh,'' she assented, with a sort of
sinister conviction. Never had I seen her look exactly
like that, for an instant another, an incredible Rita!
``Haven't I laughed at him innumerable times?'' she
added in a sombre whisper.

  He was muttering to himself out there, and unexpectedly
shouted: ``What?'' as though he had fancied he had
heard something. He waited a while before he started
up again with a loud: ``Speak up, Queen of the goats,
with your goat tricks. . . .'' All was still for a time,
then came a most awful bang on the door. He must
have stepped back a pace to hurl himself bodily against
the panels. The whole house seemed to shake. He
repeated that performance once more, and then varied it
by a prolonged drumming with his fists. It was comic.
But I felt myself struggling mentally with an invading
gloom as though I were no longer sure of myself.

  ``Take me out,'' whispered Do<n~>a Rita feverishly, ``take
me out of this house before it is too late.''

  ``You will have to stand it,'' I answered.

  ``So be it; but then you must go away yourself. Go
now, before it is too late.''

  I didn't condescend to answer this. The drumming on
the panels stopped and the absurd thunder of it died out
in the house. I don't know why precisely then I had the
acute vision of the red mouth of Jos<e'> Ortega wriggling
with rage between his funny whiskers. He began afresh
but in a tired tone:

  ``Do you expect a fellow to forget your tricks, you
wicked little devil? Haven't you ever seen me dodging
about to get a sight of you amongst those pretty gentlemen,
on horseback, like a princess, with pure cheeks like
a carved saint? I wonder I didn't throw stones at you.
I wonder I didn't run after you shouting the tale---curse
my timidity! But I daresay they knew as much as I did.
More. All the new tricks---if that were possible.''

  While he was making this uproar, Do<n~>a Rita put her
fingers in her ears and then suddenly changed her mind
and clapped her hands over my ears. Instinctively I
disengaged my head but she persisted. We had a short
tussle without moving from the spot, and suddenly I had
my head free, and there was complete silence. He had
screamed himself out of breath, but Do<n~>a Rita muttering
``Too late, too late,'' got her hands away from my grip
and shipping altogether out of her fur coat seized some
garment lying on a chair near by (I think it was her skirt),
with the intention of dressing herself, I imagine, and
rushing out of the house. Determined to prevent this,
but indeed without thinking very much what I was doing,
I got hold of her arm. That struggle was silent, too;
but I used the least force possible and she managed to
give me an unexpected push. Stepping back to save
myself from falling I overturned the little table, bearing
the six-branched candlestick. It hit the floor, rebounded
with a dull ring on the carpet, and by the time it came
to a rest every single candle was out. He on the other
side of the door naturally heard the noise and greeted it
with a triumphant screech: ``Aha! I've managed to wake
you up,'' the very savagery of which had a laughable
effect. I felt the weight of Do<n~>a Rita grow on my arm
and thought it best to let her sink on the floor, wishing
to be free in my movements and really afraid that now
he had actually heard a noise he would infallibly burst
the door. But he didn't even thump it. He seemed to
have exhausted himself in that scream. There was no
other light in the room but the darkened glow of the
embers and I could hardly make out amongst the shadows
of furniture Do<n~>a Rita sunk on her knees in a penitential
and despairing attitude. Before this collapse I, who had
been wrestling desperately with her a moment before, felt
that I dare not touch her. This emotion, too, I could
not understand; this abandonment of herself, this conscience-stricken
humility. A humbly imploring request
to open the door came from the other side. Ortega kept
on repeating: ``Open the door, open the door,'' in such an
amazing variety of intonations, imperative, whining, persuasive,
insinuating, and even unexpectedly jocose, that I
really stood there smiling to myself, yet with a gloomy
and uneasy heart. Then he remarked, parenthetically as
it were, ``Oh, you know how to torment a man, you
brown-skinned, lean, grinning, dishevelled imp, you. And
mark,'' he expounded further, in a curiously doctoral
tone---``you are in all your limbs hateful: your eyes are
hateful and your mouth is hateful, and your hair is hateful,
and your body is cold and vicious like a snake---and
altogether you are perdition.''

  This statement was astonishingly deliberate. He drew
a moaning breath after it and uttered in a heart-rending
tone, ``You know, Rita, that I cannot live without you.
I haven't lived. I am not living now. This isn't life.
Come, Rita, you can't take a boy's soul away and then
let him grow up and go about the world, poor devil,
while you go amongst the rich from one pair of arms to
another, showing all your best tricks. But I will forgive
you if you only open the door,'' he ended in an inflated
tone: ``You remember how you swore time after time to
be my wife. You are more fit to be Satan's wife but I
don't mind. You shall be _my_ wife!''

  A sound near the floor made me bend down hastily with
a stern: ``Don't laugh,'' for in his grotesque, almost
burlesque discourses there seemed to me to be truth,
passion, and horror enough to move a mountain.

  Suddenly suspicion seized him out there. With perfectly
farcical unexpectedness he yelled shrilly: ``Oh, you
deceitful wretch! You won't escape me! I will have
you. . . .''

  And in a manner of speaking he vanished. Of course
I couldn't see him but somehow that was the impression.
I had hardly time to receive it when crash! . . . he was
already at the other door. I suppose he thought that
his prey was escaping him. His swiftness was amazing,
almost inconceivable, more like the effect of a trick or
of a mechanism. The thump on the door was awful as
if he had not been able to stop himself in time. The
shock seemed enough to stun an elephant. It was really
funny. And after the crash there was a moment of silence
as if he were recovering himself. The next thing was a
low grunt, and at once he picked up the thread of his
fixed idea.

  ``You will have to be my wife. I have no shame.
You swore you would be and so you will have to be.''
Stifled low sounds made me bend down again to the
kneeling form, white in the flush of the dark red glow.
``For goodness' sake don't,'' I whispered down. She was
struggling with an appalling fit of merriment, repeating
to herself, ``Yes, every day, for two months. Sixty times
at least, sixty times at least.'' Her voice was rising high.
She was struggling against laughter, but when I tried to
put my hand over her lips I felt her face wet with tears.
She turned it this way and that, eluding my hand with
repressed low, little moans. I lost my caution and said,
``Be quiet,'' so sharply as to startle myself (and her, too)
into expectant stillness.

  Ortega's voice in the hall asked distinctly: ``Eh?
What's this?'' and then he kept still on his side listening
but he must have thought that his ears had deceived
him. He was getting tired, too. He was keeping quiet
out there---resting. Presently he sighed deeply; then in
a harsh melancholy tone he started again.

  ``My love, my soul, my life, do speak to me. What
am I that you should take so much trouble to pretend
that you aren't there? Do speak to me,'' he repeated
tremulously, following this mechanical appeal with a string
of extravagantly endearing names, some of them quite
childish, which all of a sudden stopped dead; and then
after a pause there came a distinct, unutterably weary:

  ``What shall I do now?'' as though he were speaking to
himself.

  I shuddered to hear rising from the floor, by my side,
a vibrating, scornful: ``Do! Why, slink off home looking
over your shoulder as you used to years ago when I had
done with you---all but the laughter.''

  ``Rita,'' I murmured, appalled. He must have been
struck dumb for a moment. Then, goodness only knows
why, in his dismay or rage he was moved to speak in
French with a most ridiculous accent.

  ``So you have found your tongue at last---_Catin!_
You were that from the cradle. Don't you remember
how . . .''

  Do<n~>a Rita sprang to her feet at my side with a loud
cry, ``No, George, no,'' which bewildered me completely.
The suddenness, the loudness of it made the ensuing
silence on both sides of the door perfectly awful. It
seemed to me that if I didn't resist with all my might
something in me would die on the instant. In the straight,
falling folds of the night-dress she looked cold like a
block of marble; while I, too, was turned into stone by
the terrific clamour in the hall.

  ``Therese, Therese,'' yelled Ortega. ``She has got a
man in there.'' He ran to the foot of the stairs and
screamed again, ``Therese, Therese! There is a man with
her. A man! Come down, you miserable, starved
peasant, come down and see.''

  I don't know where Therese was but I am sure that this
voice reached her, terrible, as if clamouring to heaven,
and with a shrill over-note which made me certain that
if she was in bed the only thing she would think of doing
would be to put her head under the bed-clothes. With
a final yell: ``Come down and see,'' he flew back at the
door of the room and started shaking it violently.

  It was a double door, very tall, and there must have
been a lot of things loose about its fittings, bolts, latches,
and all those brass applications with broken screws,
because it rattled, it clattered, it jingled; and produced
also the sound as of thunder rolling in the big, empty hall.
It was deafening, distressing, and vaguely alarming as if
it could bring the house down. At the same time the
futility of it had, it cannot be denied, a comic effect.
The very magnitude of the racket he raised was funny.
But he couldn't keep up that violent exertion continuously,
and when he stopped to rest we could hear him shouting
to himself in vengeful tones. He saw it all! He had been
decoyed there! (Rattle, rattle, rattle.) He had been
decoyed into that town, he screamed, getting more and
more excited by the noise he made himself, in order to
be exposed to this! (Rattle, rattle.) By this shameless
``_Catin! Catin! Catin!_''

  He started at the door again with superhuman vigour.

  Behind me I heard Do<n~>a Rita laughing softly, statuesque,
turned all dark in the fading glow. I called out
to her quite openly, ``Do keep your self-control.'' And
she called back to me in a clear voice: ``Oh, my dear,
will you ever consent to speak to me after all this?
But don't ask for the impossible. He was born to be
laughed at.''

  ``Yes,'' I cried. ``But don't let yourself go.''

  I don't know whether Ortega heard us. He was
exerting then his utmost strength of lung against the
infamous plot to expose him to the derision of the fiendish
associates of that obscene woman! . . . Then he began
another interlude upon the door, so sustained and strong
that I had the thought that this was growing absurdly
impossible, that either the plaster would begin to fall
off the ceiling or he would drop dead next moment, out
there.

  He stopped, uttered a few curses at the door, and seemed
calmer from sheer exhaustion.

  ``This story will be all over the world,'' we heard him
begin. ``Deceived, decoyed, inveighed, in order to be
made a laughing-stock before the most debased of all mankind,
that woman and her associates.'' This was really
a meditation. And then he screamed: ``I will kill you
all.'' Once more he started worrying the door but it was
a startlingly feeble effort which he abandoned almost at
once. He must have been at the end of his strength.
Do<n~>a Rita from the middle of the room asked me recklessly
loud: ``Tell me! Wasn't he born to be laughed
at?'' I didn't answer her. I was so near the door that
I thought I ought to hear him panting there. He was
terrifying, but he was not serious. He was at the end of
his strength, of his breath, of every kind of endurance,
but I did not know it. He was done up, finished; but
perhaps he did not know it himself. How still he was!
Just as I began to wonder at it, I heard him distinctly
give a slap to his forehead. ``I see it all!'' he cried.
``That miserable, canting peasant-woman upstairs has
arranged it all. No doubt she consulted her priests. I
must regain my self-respect. Let her die first.'' I heard
him make a dash for the foot of the stairs. I was appalled;
yet to think of Therese being hoisted with her own petard
was like a turn of affairs in a farce. A very ferocious
farce. Instinctively I unlocked the door. Do<n~>a Rita's
contralto laugh rang out loud, bitter, and contemptuous;
and I heard Ortega's distracted screaming as if under
torture. ``It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!'' I hesitated
just an instant, half a second, no more, but before I could
open the door wide there was in the hall a short groan
and the sound of a heavy fall.

  The sight of Ortega lying on his back at the foot of the
stairs arrested me in the doorway. One of his legs was
drawn up, the other extended fully, his foot very near
the pedestal of the silver statuette holding the feeble
and tenacious gleam which made the shadows so heavy
in that hall. One of his arms lay across his breast. The
other arm was extended full length on the white-and-black
pavement with the hand palm upwards and the fingers
rigidly spread out. The shadow of the lowest step slanted
across his face but one whisker and part of his chin could
be made out. He appeared strangely flattened. he
didn't move at all. He was in his shirt-sleeves. I felt
an extreme distaste for that sight. The characteristic
sound of a key worrying in the lock stole into my ears. I
couldn't locate it but I didn't attend much to that
at first. I was engaged in watching Se<n~>or Ortega. But
for his raised leg he clung so flat to the floor and had
taken on himself such a distorted shape that he might
have been the mere shadow of Se<n~>or Ortega. It was rather
fascinating to see him so quiet at the end of all that fury,
clamour, passion, and uproar. Surely there was never
anything so still in the world as this Ortega. I had a
bizarre notion that he was not to be disturbed.

  A noise like the rattling of chain links, a small grind
and click exploded in the stillness of the hall and a
voice began to swear in Italian. These surprising
sounds were quite welcome, they recalled me to myself,
and I perceived they came from the front door which
seemed pushed a little ajar. Was somebody trying to
get in? I had no objection, I went to the door and
said: ``Wait a moment, it's on the chain.'' The deep
voice on the other side said: ``What an extraordinary
thing,'' and I assented mentally. It was extraordinary.
The chain was never put up, but Therese was a thorough
sort of person, and on this night she had put it up to
keep no one out except myself. It was the old Italian
and his daughters returning from the ball who were
trying to get in.

  Suddenly I became intensely alive to the whole situation.
I bounded back, closed the door of Blunt's room, and
the next moment was speaking to the Italian. ``A little
patience.'' My hands trembled but I managed to take
down the chain and as I allowed the door to swing open
a little more I put myself in his way. He was burly,
venerable, a little indignant, and full of thanks. Behind
him his two girls, in short-skirted costumes, white stockings,
and low shoes, their heads powdered and earrings
sparkling in their ears, huddled together behind their
father, wrapped up in their light mantles. One had kept
her little black mask on her face, the other held hers in
her hand.

  The Italian was surprised at my blocking the way and
remarked pleasantly, ``It's cold outside, Signor.'' I said,
``Yes,'' and added in a hurried whisper: ``There is a dead
man in the hall.'' He didn't say a single word but put
me aside a little, projected his body in for one searching
glance. ``Your daughters,'' I murmured. He said
kindly, ``_Va bene, va bene._'' And then to them, ``Come
in, girls.''

  There is nothing like dealing with a man who has had
a long past of out-of-the-way experiences. The skill with
which he rounded up and drove the girls across the hall,
paternal and irresistible, venerable and reassuring, was a
sight to see. They had no time for more than one scared
look over the shoulder. He hustled them in and locked
them up safely in their part of the house, then crossed
the hall with a quick, practical stride. When near Se<n~>or
Ortega he trod short just in time and said: ``In truth,
blood''; then selecting the place, knelt down by the body
in his tall hat and respectable overcoat, his white beard
giving him immense authority somehow. ``But this man
is not dead,'' he exclaimed, looking up at me. With
profound sagacity, inherent as it were in his great beard,
he never took the trouble to put any questions to me and
seemed certain that I had nothing to do with the ghastly
sight. ``He managed to give himself an enormous gash in
his side,'' was his calm remark. ``And what a weapon!''
he exclaimed, getting it out from under the body. It
was an Abyssinian or Nubian production of a bizarre
shape; the clumsiest thing imaginable, partaking of a
sickle and a chopper with a sharp edge and a pointed end.
A mere cruel-looking curio of inconceivable clumsiness to
European eyes.

  The old man let it drop with amused disdain. ``You
had better take hold of his legs,'' he decided without
appeal. I certainly had no inclination to argue. When
we lifted him up the head of Se<n~>or Ortega fell back desolately,
making an awful, defenceless display of his large,
white throat.

  We found the lamp burning in the studio and the bed
made up on the couch on which we deposited our burden.
My venerable friend jerked the upper sheet away at once
and started tearing it into strips.

  ``You may leave him to me,'' said that efficient sage,
``but the doctor is your affair. If you don't want this
business to make a noise you will have to find a discreet
man.''

  He was most benevolently interested in all the proceedings.
He remarked with a patriarchal smile as he tore
the sheet noisily: ``You had better not lose any time.''
I didn't lose any time. I crammed into the next hour
an astonishing amount of bodily activity. Without more
words I flew out bare-headed into the last night of Carnival.
Luckily I was certain of the right sort of doctor.
He was an iron-grey man of forty and of a stout habit
of body but who was able to put on a spurt. In the
cold, dark, and deserted by-streets, he ran with earnest
and ponderous footsteps, which echoed loudly in the cold
night air, while I skimmed along the ground a pace or two
in front of him. It was only on arriving at the house that
I perceived that I had left the front door wide open. All
the town, every evil in the world could have entered the
black-and-white hall. But I had no time to meditate upon
my imprudence. The doctor and I worked in silence for
nearly an hour and it was only then while he was washing
his hands in the fencing-room that he asked:

  ``What was he up to, that imbecile?''

  ``Oh, he was examining this curiosity,'' I said.

  ``Oh, yes, and it accidentally went off,'' said the doctor,
looking contemptuously at the Nubian knife I had thrown
on the table. Then while wiping his hands: ``I would bet
there is a woman somewhere under this; but that of course
does not affect the nature of the wound. I hope this
blood-letting will do him good.''

  ``Nothing will do him any good,'' I said.

  ``Curious house this,'' went on the doctor. ``It belongs
to a curious sort of woman, too. I happened to see her
once or twice. I shouldn't wonder if she were to raise
considerable trouble in the track of her pretty feet as she
goes along. I believe you know her well.''

  ``Yes.''

  ``Curious people in the house, too. There was a Carlist
officer here, a lean, tall, dark man, who couldn't sleep.
He consulted me once. Do you know what became of
him?''

  ``No.''

  The doctor had finished wiping his hands and flung the
towel far away.

  ``Considerable nervous over-strain. Seemed to have a
restless brain. Not a good thing, that. For the rest a
perfect gentleman. And this Spaniard here, do you know
him?''

  ``Enough not to care what happens to him,'' I said,
``except for the trouble he might cause to the Carlist
sympathizers here, should the police get hold of this
affair.''

  ``Well, then, he must take his chance in the seclusion
of that conservatory sort of place where you have put
him. I'll try to find somebody we can trust to look after
him. Meantime, I will leave the case to you.''


			VIII

  Directly I had shut the door after the doctor I started
shouting for Therese. ``Come down at once, you wretched
hypocrite,'' I yelled at the foot of the stairs in a sort of
frenzy as though I had been a second Ortega. Not even
an echo answered me; but all of a sudden a small flame
flickered descending from the upper darkness and Therese
appeared on the first floor landing carrying a lighted candle
in front of a livid, hard face, closed against remorse, compassion,
or mercy by the meanness of her righteousness
and of her rapacious instincts. She was fully dressed in
that abominable brown stuff with motionless folds, and
as I watched her coming down step by step she might
have been made of wood. I stepped back and pointed
my finger at the darkness of the passage leading to the
studio. She passed within a foot of me, her pale eyes
staring straight ahead, her face still with disappointment
and fury. Yet it is only my surmise. She might have
been made thus inhuman by the force of an invisible
purpose. I waited a moment, then, stealthily, with extreme
caution, I opened the door of the so-called Captain
Blunt's room.

  The glow of embers was all but out. It was cold and
dark in there; but before I closed the door behind me the
dim light from the hall showed me Do<n~>a Rita standing on
the very same spot where I had left her, statuesque in
her night-dress. Even after I shut the door she loomed
up enormous, indistinctly rigid and inanimate. I picked
up the candelabra, groped for a candle all over the carpet,
found one, and lighted it. All that time Do<n~>a Rita didn't
stir. When I turned towards her she seemed to be slowly
awakening from a trance. She was deathly pale and by
contrast the melted, sapphire-blue of her eyes looked black
as coal. They moved a little in my direction, incurious,
recognizing me slowly. But when they had recognized me
completely she raised her hands and hid her face in them.
A whole minute or more passed. Then I said in a low
tone: ``Look at me,'' and she let them fall slowly as if
accepting the inevitable.

  ``Shall I make up the fire?'' . . . I waited. ``Do you
hear me?'' She made no sound and with the tip of my
finger I touched her bare shoulder. But for its elasticity
it might have been frozen. At once I looked round
for the fur coat; it seemed to me that there was not a
moment to lose if she was to be saved, as though we had
been lost on an Arctic plain. I had to put her arms into
the sleeves, myself, one after another. They were cold,
lifeless, but flexible. Then I moved in front of her and
buttoned the thing close round her throat. To do that
I had actually to raise her chin with my finger, and it
sank slowly down again. I buttoned all the other buttons
right down to the ground. It was a very long and splendid
fur. Before rising from my kneeling position I felt her
feet. Mere ice. The intimacy of this sort of attendance
helped the growth of my authority. ``Lie down,'' I
murmured, ``I shall pile on you every blanket I can find
here,'' but she only shook her head.

  Not even in the days when she ran ``shrill as a cicada
and thin as a match'' through the chill mists of her native
mountains could she ever have felt so cold, so wretched,
and so desolate. Her very soul, her grave, indignant,
and fantastic soul, seemed to drowse like an exhausted
traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of death. But
when I asked her again to lie down she managed to answer
me, ``Not in this room.'' The dumb spell was broken.
She turned her head from side to side, but oh! how cold
she was! It seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too;
and the very diamonds on the arrow of gold sparkled
like hoar frost in the light of the one candle.

  ``Not in this room; not here,'' she protested, with that
peculiar suavity of tone which made her voice unforgettable,
irresistible, no matter what she said. ``Not
after all this! I couldn't close my eyes in this place. It's
full of corruption and ugliness all round, in me, too,
everywhere except in your heart, which has nothing to
do where I breathe. And here you may leave me. But
wherever you go remember that I am not evil, I am not
evil.''

  I said: ``I don't intend to leave you here. There is
my room upstairs. You have been in it before.''

  ``Oh, you have heard of that,'' she whispered. The
beginning of a wan smile vanished from her lips.

  ``I also think you can't stay in this room; and, surely,
you needn't hesitate . . .''

  ``No. It doesn't matter now. He has killed me.
Rita is dead.''

  While we exchanged these words I had retrieved the
quilted, blue slippers and had put them on her feet. She
was very tractable. Then taking her by the arm I led
her towards the door.

  ``He has killed me,'' she repeated in a sigh. ``The
little joy that was in me.''

  ``He has tried to kill himself out there in the hall,''
I said. She put back like a frightened child but she
couldn't be dragged on as a child can be.

  I assured her that the man was no longer there but she
only repeated, ``I can't get through the hall. I can't
walk. I can't . . .''

  ``Well,'' I said, flinging the door open and seizing her
suddenly in my arms, ``if you can't walk then you shall
be carried,'' and I lifted her from the ground so abruptly
that she could not help catching me round the neck as
any child almost will do instinctively when you pick
it up.

  I ought really to have put those blue slippers in my
pocket. One dropped off at the bottom of the stairs as
I was stepping over an unpleasant-looking mess on the
marble pavement, and the other was lost a little way up
the flight when, for some reason (perhaps from a sense of
insecurity), she began to struggle. Though I had an odd
sense or being engaged in a sort of nursery adventure
she was no child to carry. I could just do it. But not
if she chose to struggle. I set her down hastily and only
supported her round the waist for the rest of the way.
My room, of course, was perfectly dark but I led her
straight to the sofa at once and let her fall on it. Then as
if I had in sober truth rescued her from an Alpine height
or an Arctic floe, I busied myself with nothing but lighting
the gas and starting the fire. I didn't even pause to lock
my door. All the time I was aware of her presence behind
me, nay, of something deeper and more my own---of
her existence itself---of a small blue flame, blue like her
eyes, flickering and clear within her frozen body. When
I turned to her she was sitting very stiff and upright,
with her feet posed hieratically on the carpet and her head
emerging out of the ample fur collar, such as a gem-like
flower above the rim of a dark vase. I tore the blankets
and the pillows off my bed and piled them up in readiness
in a great heap on the floor near the couch. My reason
for this was that the room was large, too large for the
fireplace, and the couch was nearest to the fire. She gave
no sign but one of her wistful attempts at a smile. In
a most business-like way I took the arrow out of her hair
and laid it on the centre table. The tawny mass fell
loose at once about her shoulders and made her look
even more desolate than before. But there was an invincible
need of gaiety in her heart. She said funnily,
looking at the arrow sparkling in the gas light:

  ``Ah! That poor philistinish ornament!''

  An echo of our early days, not more innocent but so
much more youthful, was in her tone; and we both, as if
touched with poignant regret, looked at each other with
enlightened eyes.

  ``Yes,'' I said, ``how far away all this is. And you
wouldn't leave even that object behind when you came
last in here. Perhaps it is for that reason it haunted me
---mostly at night. I dreamed of you sometimes as a
huntress nymph gleaming white through the foliage and
throwing this arrow like a dart straight at my heart. But
it never reached it. It always fell at my feet as I woke
up. The huntress never meant to strike down that
particular quarry.''

  ``The huntress was wild but she was not evil. And
she was no nymph, but only a goatherd girl. Dream of
her no more, my dear.''

  I had the strength of mind to make a sign of assent and
busied myself arranging a couple of pillows at one end of
the sofa. ``Upon my soul, goatherd, you are not responsible,''
I said. ``You are not! Lay down that uneasy
head,'' I continued, forcing a half-playful note into my
immense sadness, ``that has even dreamed of a crown---
but not for itself.''

  She lay down quietly. I covered her up, looked once
into her eyes and felt the restlessness of fatigue overpower
me so that I wanted to stagger out, walk straight
before me, stagger on and on till I dropped. In the end
I lost myself in thought. I woke with a start to her
voice saying positively:

  ``No. Not even in this room. I can't close my eyes.
Impossible. I have a horror of myself. That voice in
my ears. All true. All true.''

  She was sitting up, two masses of tawny hair fell on
each side of her tense face. I threw away the pillows
from which she had risen and sat down behind her on the
couch. ``Perhaps like this,'' I suggested, drawing her
head gently on my breast. She didn't resist, she didn't
even sigh she didn't look at me or attempt to settle herself
in any way. It was I who settled her after taking
up a position which I thought I should be able to keep
for hours---for ages. After a time I grew composed
enough to become aware of the ticking of the clock, even
to take pleasure in it. The beat recorded the moments
of her rest, while I sat, keeping as still as if my life depended
upon it with my eyes fixed idly on the arrow of
gold gleaming and glittering dimly on the table under
the lowered gas-jet. And presently my breathing fell
into the quiet rhythm of the sleep which descended on
her at last. My thought was that now nothing mattered
in the world because I had the world safe resting in my
arms--- or was it in my heart?

  Suddenly my heart seemed torn in two within my
breast and half of my breath knocked out of me. It was
a tumultuous awakening. The day had come. Do<n~>a
Rita had opened her eyes, found herself in my arms, and
instantly had flung herself out of them with one sudden
effort. I saw her already standing in the filtered sunshine
of the closed shutters, with all the childlike horror
and shame of that night vibrating afresh in the awakened
body of the woman.

  ``Daylight,'' she whispered in an appalled voice.
``Don't look at me, George. I can't face daylight. No
---not with you. Before we set eyes on each other all
that past was like nothing. I had crushed it all in
my new pride. Nothing could touch the Rita whose
hand was kissed by you. But now! Never in daylight.''

  I sat there stupid with surprise and grief. This was no
longer the adventure of venturesome children in a nursery-book.
A grown man's bitterness, informed, suspicious,
resembling hatred, welled out of my heart.

  ``All this means that you are going to desert me
again?'' I said with contempt. ``All right. I won't
throw stones after you . . . Are you going, then?''

  She lowered her head slowly with a backward gesture
of her arm as if to keep me off, for I had sprung to my
feet all at once as if mad.

  ``Then go quickly,'' I said. ``You are afraid of living
flesh and blood. What are you running after? Honesty,
as you say, or some distinguished carcass to feed your
vanity on? I know how cold you can be and yet live.
What have I done to you? You go to sleep in my arms,
wake up and go away. Is it to impress me? Charlatanism
of character, my dear.''

  She stepped forward on her bare feet as firm on that
floor which seemed to heave up and down before my eyes
as she had ever been---goatherd child leaping on the
rocks of her native hills which she was never to see
again. I snatched the arrow of gold from the table and
threw it after her.

  ``Don't forget this thing,'' I cried, ``you would never
forgive yourself for leaving it behind.''

  It struck the back of the fur coat and fell on the floor
behind her. She never looked round. She walked to the
door, opened it without haste, and on the landing in the
diffused light from the ground-glass skylight there appeared,
rigid, like an implacable and obscure fate, the awful
Therese---waiting for her sister. The heavy ends of a
big black shawl thrown over her head hung massively in
biblical folds. With a faint cry of dismay Do<n~>a Rita
stopped just within my room.

  The two women faced each other for a few moments
silently. Therese spoke first. There was no austerity in her
tone. Her voice was as usual, pertinacious, unfeeling, with
a slight plaint in it; terrible in its unchanged purpose.

  ``I have been standing here before this door all night,''
she said. ``I don't know how I lived through it. I
thought I would die a hundred times for shame. So
that's how you are spending your time? You are worse
than shameless. But God may still forgive you. You
have a soul. You are my sister. I will never abandon
you---till you die.''

  ``What is it?'' Do<n~>a Rita was heard wistfully, ``my
soul or this house that you won't abandon.''

  ``Come out and bow your head in humiliation. I am
your sister and I shall help you to pray to God and all
the Saints. Come away from that poor young gentleman
who like all the others can have nothing but contempt
and disgust for you in his heart. Come and hide your
head where no one will reproach you---but I, your sister.
Come out and beat your breast: come, poor Sinner, and
let me kiss you, for you are my sister!''

  While Therese was speaking Do<n~>a Rita stepped back
a pace and as the other moved forward still extending
the hand of sisterly love, she slammed the door in Therese's
face. ``You abominable girl!'' she cried fiercely. Then
she turned about and walked towards me who had not
moved. I felt hardly alive but for the cruel pain that
possessed my whole being. On the way she stooped to
pick up the arrow of gold and then moved on quicker,
holding it out to me in her open palm.

  ``You thought I wouldn't give it to you. _Amigo,_ I
wanted nothing so much as to give it to you. And now,
perhaps---you will take it.''

  ``Not without the woman,'' I said sombrely.

  ``Take it,'' she said. ``I haven't the courage to deliver
myself up to Therese. No. Not even for your sake.
Don't you think I have been miserable enough yet?''

  I snatched the arrow out of her hand then and ridiculously
pressed it to my breast; but as I opened my lips
she who knew what was struggling for utterance in my
heart cried in a ringing tone:

  ``Speak no words of love, George! Not yet. Not in
this house of ill-luck and falsehood. Not within a hundred
miles of this house, where they came clinging to me all
profaned from the mouth of that man. Haven't you
heard them---the horrible things? And what can words
have to do between you and me?''

  Her hands were stretched out imploringly. I said,
childishly disconcerted:

  ``But, Rita, how can I help using words of love to you?
They come of themselves on my lips!''

  ``They come! Ah! But I shall seal your lips with the
thing itself,'' she said. ``Like this. . . .''


			SECOND NOTE

  The narrative of our man goes on for some six months
more, from this, the last night of the Carnival season up
to and beyond the season of roses. The tone of it is much
less of exultation than might have been expected. Love
as is well known having nothing to do with reason, being
insensible to forebodings and even blind to evidence, the
surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss has
nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as
he attempts it, lacks dramatic interest. The sentimental
interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves
actually in love. The response of a reader depends
on the mood of the moment, so much so that a book
may seem extremely interesting when read late at night,
but might appear merely a lot of vapid verbiage in the
morning. My conviction is that the mood in which
the continuation of his story would appear sympathetic
is very rare. This consideration has induced me to suppress
it---all but the actual facts which round up the
previous events and satisfy such curiosity as might have
been aroused by the foregoing narrative.

  It is to be remarked that this period is characterized
more by a deep and joyous tenderness than by sheer
passion. All fierceness of spirit seems to have burnt
itself out in their preliminary hesitations and struggles
against each other and themselves. Whether love in
its entirety has, speaking generally, the same clementary
meaning for women as for men, is very doubtful.
Civilization has been at work there. But the fact is that
those two display, in every phase of discovery and response,
an exact accord. Both show themselves amazingly
ingenuous in the practice of sentiment. I believe
that those who know women won't be surprised to hear
me say that she was as new to love as he was. During
their retreat in the region of the Maritime Alps, in a small
house built of dry stones and embowered with roses, they
appear all through to be less like released lovers than as
companions who had found out each other's fitness in a
specially intense way. Upon the whole, I think that there
must be some truth in his insistence of there having always
been something childlike in their relation. In the unreserved
and instant sharing of all thoughts, all impressions,
all sensations, we see the naiveness of a children's foolhardy
adventure. This unreserve expressed for him the whole
truth of the situation. With her it may have been different.
It might have been assumed; yet nobody is altogether
a comedian; and even comedians themselves have
got to believe in the part they play. Of the two she
appears much the more assured and confident. But if
in this she was a comedienne then it was but a great
achievement of her ineradicable honesty. Having once
renounced her honourable scruples she took good care
that he should taste no flavour of misgivings in the cup.
Being older it was she who imparted its character to the
situation. As to the man if he had any superiority of his
own it was simply the superiority of him who loves with
the greater self-surrender.

  This is what appears from the pages I have discreetly
suppressed---partly out of regard for the pages themselves.
In every, even terrestrial, mystery there is as
it were a sacred core. A sustained commentary on love
is not fit for every eye. A universal experience is exactly
the sort of thing which is most difficult to appraise justly
in a particular instance.

  How this particular instance affected Rose, who was the
only companion of the two hermits in their rose-embowered
hut of stones, I regret not to be able to report; but
I will venture to say that for reasons on which I need
not enlarge, the girl could not have been very reassured
by what she saw. It seems to me that her devotion could
never be appeased; for the conviction must have been
growing on her that, no matter what happened, Madame
could never have any friends. It may be that Do<n~>a
Rita had given her a glimpse of the unavoidable end,
and that the girl's tarnished eyes masked a certain amount
of apprehensive, helpless desolation.

  What meantime was becoming of the fortune of Henry
All<e`>gre is another curious question. We have been told
that it was too big to be tied up in a sack and thrown
into the sea. That part of it represented by the fabulous
collections was still being protected by the police. But
for the rest, it may be assumed that its power and significance
were lost to an interested world for something like
six months. What is certain is that the late Henry
All<e`>gre's man of affairs found himself comparatively idle.
The holiday must have done much good to his harassed
brain. He had received a note from Do<n~>a Rita saying
that she had gone into retreat and that she did not mean
to send him her address, not being in the humour to be
worried with letters on any subject whatever. ``It's
enough for you''---she wrote---``to know that I am
alive.'' Later, at irregular intervals, he received scraps
of paper bearing the stamps of various post offices and
containing the simple statement: ``I am still alive,''
signed with an enormous, flourished exuberant R. I
imagine Rose had to travel some distances by rail to
post those messages. A thick veil of secrecy had been
lowered between the world and the lovers; yet even this
veil turned out not altogether impenetrable.

  He---it would be convenient to call him Monsieur
George to the end---shared with Do<n~>a Rita her perfect detachment
from all mundane affairs; but he had to make
two short visits to Marseilles. The first was prompted
by his loyal affection for Dominic. He wanted to discover
what had happened or was happening to Dominic
and to find out whether he could do something for that
man. But Dominic was not the sort of person for whom
one can do much. Monsieur George did not even see
him. It looked uncommonly as if Dominic's heart were
broken. Monsieur George remained concealed for twenty-four
hours in the very house in which Madame L<e'>onore
had her caf<e'>. He spent most of that time in conversing
with Madame L<e'>onore about Dominic. She was distressed,
but her mind was made up. That bright-eyed,
nonchalant, and passionate woman was making arrangements
to dispose of her caf<e'> before departing to join
Dominic. She would not say where. Having ascertained
that his assistance was not required Monsieur George,
in his own words, ``managed to sneak out of the town
without being seen by a single soul that mattered.''

  The second occasion was very prosaic and shockingly
incongruous with the super-mundane colouring of these
days. He had neither the fortune of Henry All<e`>gre nor
a man of affairs of his own. But some rent had to be paid
to somebody for the stone hut and Rose could not go
marketing in the tiny hamlet at the foot of the hill without
a little money. There came a time when Monsieur
George had to descend from the heights of his love in order,
in his own words, ``to get a supply of cash.'' As he had
disappeared very suddenly and completely for a time from
the eyes of mankind it was necessary that he should
show himself and sign some papers. That business was
transacted in the office of the banker mentioned in the
story. Monsieur George wished to avoid seeing the man
himself but in this he did not succeed. The interview
was short. The banker naturally asked no questions,
made no allusions to persons and events, and didn't even
mention the great Legitimist Principle which presented
to him now no interest whatever. But for the moment
all the world was talking of the Carlist enterprise. It
had collapsed utterly, leaving behind, as usual, a large
crop of recriminations, charges of incompetency and
treachery, and a certain amount of scandalous gossip.
The banker (his wife's salon had been very Carlist indeed)
declared that he had never believed in the success of the
cause. ``You are well out of it,'' he remarked with a
chilly smile to Monsieur George. The latter merely
observed that he had been very little ``in it'' as a matter
of fact, and that he was quite indifferent to the whole
affair.

  ``You left a few of your feathers in it, nevertheless,''
the banker concluded with a wooden face and with the
curtness of a man who knows.

  Monsieur George ought to have taken the very next
train out of the town but he yielded to the temptation to
discover what had happened to the house in the street
of the Consuls after he and Do<n~>a Rita had stolen out of
it like two scared yet jubilant children. All he discovered
was a strange, fat woman, a sort of virago, who had,
apparently, been put in as a caretaker by the man of
affairs. She made some difficulties to admit that she had
been in charge for the last four months; ever since the
person who was there before had eloped with some
Spaniard who had been lying in the house ill with fever
for more than six weeks. No, she never saw the person.
Neither had she seen the Spaniard. She had only heard the
talk of the street. Of course she didn't know where these
people had gone. She manifested some impatience to get
rid of Monsieur George and even attempted to push him
toward the door. It was, he says, a very funny experience.
He noticed the feeble flame of the gas-jet in the
hall still waiting for extinction in the general collapse of
the world

  Then he decided to have a bit of dinner at the Restaurant
de la Gare where he felt pretty certain he would
not meet any of his friends. He could not have asked
Madame L<e'>onore for hospitality because Madame L<e'>onore
had gone away already. His acquaintances were not
the sort of people likely to happen casually into a restaurant
of that kind and moreover he took the precaution to
seat himself at a small table so as to face the wall. Yet
before long he felt a hand laid gently on his shoulder,
and, looking up, saw one of his acquaintances a member
of the Royalist club, a young man of a very cheerful disposition
but whose face looked down at him with a grave
and anxious expression.

  Monsieur George was far from delighted. His surprise
was extreme when in the course of the first phrases exchanged
with him he learned that this acquaintance had
come to the station with the hope of finding him there.

  ``You haven't been seen for some time,'' he said. ``You
were perhaps somewhere where the news from the world
couldn't reach you? There have been many changes
amongst our friends and amongst people one used to hear
of so much. There is Madame de Lastaola for instance,
who seems to have vanished from the world which was
so much interested in her. You have no idea where she
may be now? ''

  Monsieur George remarked grumpily that he couldn't
say.

  The other tried to appear at ease. Tongues were wagging
about it in Paris. There was a sort of international
financier, a fellow with an Italian name, a shady personality,
who had been looking for her all over Europe
and talked in clubs---astonishing how such fellows get
into the best clubs---oh! Azzolati was his name. But
perhaps what a fellow like that said did not matter. The
funniest thing was that there was no man of any position
in the world who had disappeared at the same time. A
friend in Paris wrote to him that a certain well-known
journalist had rushed South to investigate the mystery
but had returned no wiser than he went.

  Monsieur George remarked more unamiably than before
that he really could not help all that.

  ``No,'' said the other with extreme gentleness, `` only
of all the people more or less connected with the Carlist
affair you are the only one that had also disappeared before
the final collapse.''

  ``What!'' cried Monsieur George.

  ``Just so,'' said the other meaningly. ``You know that
all my people like you very much, though they hold
various opinions as to your discretion. Only the other
day Jane, you know my married sister, and I were talking
about you. She was extremely distressed. I assured her
that you must be very far away or very deeply buried
somewhere not to have given a sign of life under this
provocation.''

  Naturally Monsieur George wanted to know what it
was all about; and the other appeared greatly relieved.

  ``I was sure you couldn't have heard. I don't want
to be indiscreet, I don't want to ask you where you were.
It came to my ears that you had been seen at the bank
to-day and I made a special effort to lay hold of you
before you vanished again; for, after all, we have been
always good friends and all our lot here liked you very
much. Listen. You know a certain Captain Blunt,
don't you?''

  Monsieur George owned to knowing Captain Blunt
but only very slightly. His friend then informed him that
this Captain Blunt was apparently well acquainted with
Madame de Lastaola, or, at any rate, pretended to be.
He was an honourable man, a member of a good club,
he was very Parisian in a way, and all this, he continued,
made all the worse that of which he was under the painful
necessity of warning Monsieur George. This Blunt
on three distinct occasions when the name of Madame de
Lastaola came up in conversation in a mixed company
of men had expressed his regret that she should have
become the prey of a young adventurer who was exploiting
her shamelessly. He talked like a man certain of his facts
and as he mentioned names . . .''

  ``In fact,'' the young man burst out excitedly, ``it is
_your_ name that he mentions. And in order to fix the exact
personality he always takes care to add that you are
that young fellow who was known as Monsieur George
all over the South amongst the initiated Carlists.''

  How Blunt had got enough information to base that
atrocious calumny upon, Monsieur George couldn't
imagine. But there it was. He kept silent in his indignation
till his friend murmured, ``I expect you will want
him to know that you are here.''

  ``Yes,'' said Monsieur George, ``and I hope you will
consent to act for me altogether. First of all, pray, let him
know by wire that I am waiting for him. This will be
enough to fetch him down here, I can assure you. You
may ask him also to bring two friends with him. I don't
intend this to be an affair for Parisian journalists to write
paragraphs about.''

  ``Yes. That sort of thing must be stopped at once,''
the other admitted. He assented to Monsieur George's
request that the meeting should be arranged for at his
elder brother's country place where the family stayed
very seldom. There was a most convenient walled
garden there. And then Monsieur George caught his
train promising to be back on the fourth day and leaving
all further arrangements to his friend. He prided himself
on his impenetrability before Do<n~>a Rita; on the happiness
without a shadow of those four days. However, Do<n~>a
Rita must have had the intuition of there being something
in the wind, because on the evening of the very same day
on which he left her again on some pretence or other,
she was already ensconced in the house in the street of
the Consuls, with the trustworthy Rose scouting all over
the town to gain information.

  Of the proceedings in the walled garden there is no need
to speak in detail. They were conventionally correct,
but an earnestness of purpose which could be felt in the
very air lifted the business above the common run of
affairs of honour. One bit of byplay unnoticed by the
seconds, very busy for the moment with their arrangements,
must be mentioned. Disregarding the severe
rules of conduct in such cases Monsieur George approached
his adversary and addressed him directly.

  ``Captain Blunt,'' he said, ``the result of this meeting
may go against me. In that case you will recognize
publicly that you were wrong, For you are wrong and
you know it. May I trust your honour?''

  In answer to that appeal Captain Blunt, always correct,
didn't open his lips but only made a little bow. For the
rest he was perfectly ruthless. If he was utterly incapable
of being carried away by love there was nothing equivocal
about his jealousy. Such psychology is not very rare and
really from the point of view of the combat itself one
cannot very well blame him. What happened was this.
Monsieur George fired on the word and, whether luck or
skill, managed to hit Captain Blunt ill the upper part
of the arm which was holding the pistol. That gentleman's
arm dropped powerless by his side. But he did not
drop his weapon. There was nothing equivocal about his
determination. With the greatest deliberation he reached
with his left hand for his pistol and taking careful aim
shot Monsieur George through the left side of his breast.
One may imagine the consternation of the four seconds and
the activity of the two surgeons in the confined, drowsy
heat of that walled garden. It was within an easy drive
of the town and as Monsieur George was being conveyed
there at a walking pace a little brougham coming from the
opposite direction pulled up at the side of the road. A
thickly veiled woman's head looked out of the window,
took in the state of affairs at a glance, and called out in
a firm voice: ``Follow my carriage.'' The brougham turning
round took the lead. Long before this convoy reached
the town another carriage containing four gentlemen (of
whom one was leaning back languidly with his arm in a
sling) whisked past and vanished ahead in a cloud of white,
Proven<c,>al dust. And this is the last appearance of
Captain Blunt in Monsieur George's narrative. Of course
he was only told of it later. At the time he was not in a
condition to notice things. His interest in his surroundings
remained of a hazy and nightmarish kind for many days
together. From time to time he had the impression that
he was in a room strangely familiar to him, that he had
unsatisfactory visions of Do<n~>a Rita, to whom he tried
to speak as if nothing had happened, but that she always
put her hand on his mouth to prevent him and then spoke
to him herself in a very strange voice which sometimes
resembled the voice of Rose. The face, too, sometimes
resembled the face of Rose. There were also one or two
men's faces which he seemed to know well enough though
he didn't recall their names. He could have done so with
a slight effort, but it would have been too much trouble.
Then came a time when the hallucinations of Do<n~>a Rita
and the faithful Rose left him altogether. Next came a
period, perhaps a year, or perhaps an hour, during which
he seemed to dream all through his past life. He felt no
apprehension, he didn't try to speculate as to the future.
He felt that all possible conclusions were out of his power,
and therefore he was indifferent to everything. He was
like that dream's disinterested spectator who doesn't
know what is going to happen next. Suddenly for the first
time in his life he had the soul-satisfying consciousness
of floating off into deep slumber.

  When he woke up after an hour, or a day, or a month,
there was dusk in the room; but he recognized it perfectly.
It was his apartment in Do<n~>a Rita's house; those
were the familiar surroundings in which he had so often
told himself that he must either die or go mad. But
now he felt perfectly clear-headed and the full sensation
of being alive came all over him, languidly delicious. The
greatest beauty of it was that there was no need to move.
This gave him a sort of moral satisfaction. Then the first
thought independent of personal sensations came into his
head. He wondered when Therese would come in and
begin talking. He saw vaguely a human figure in the
room but that was a man. He was speaking in a deadened
voice which had yet a preternatural distinctness.

  ``This is the second case I have had in this house, and
I am sure that directly or indirectly it was connected with
that woman. She will go on like this leaving a track
behind her and then some day there will be really a corpse.
This young fellow might have been it.''

  ``In this case, Doctor,'' said another voice, ``one can't
blame the woman very much. I assure you she made a
very determined fight.''

  ``What do you mean? That she didn't want to . . .''

  ``Yes. A very good fight. I heard all about it. It is
easy to blame her, but, as she asked me despairingly, could
she go through life veiled from head to foot or go out
of it altogether into a convent? No, she isn't guilty. She
is simply---what she is.''

  ``And what's that?''

  ``Very much of a woman. Perhaps a little more at the
mercy of contradictory impulses than other women. But
that's not her fault. I really think she has been very
honest.''

  The voices sank suddenly to a still lower murmur and
presently the shape of the man went out of the room.
Monsieur George heard distinctly the door open and shut.
Then he spoke for the first time, discovering, with a particular
pleasure, that it was quite easy to speak. He was
even under the impression that he had shouted:

  ``Who is here?''

  From the shadow of the room (he recognized at once the
characteristic outlines of the bulky shape) Mills advanced
to the side of the bed. Do<n~>a Rita had telegraphed to
him on the day of the duel and the man of books, leaving
his retreat, had come as fast as boats and trains could
carry him South. For, as he said later to Monsieur
George, he had become fully awake to his part of responsibility.
And he added: ``It was not of you alone that I
was thinking.'' But the very first question that Monsieur
George put to him was:

  ``How long is it since I saw you last?''

  ``Something like ten months,'' answered Mills' kindly
voice.

  ``Ah! Is Therese outside the door? She stood there
all night, you know.''

  ``Yes, I heard of it. She is hundreds of miles away now.''

  ``Well, then, ask Rita to come in.''

  ``I can't do that, my dear boy,'' said Mills with affectionate
gentleness. He hesitated a moment. ``Do<n~>a
Rita went away yesterday,'' he said softly.

  ``Went away? Why?'' asked Monsieur George.

  ``Because, I am thankful to say, your life is no
longer in danger. And I have told you that she is gone
because, strange as it may seem, I believe you can
stand this news better now than later when you get
stronger.''

  It must be believed that Mills was right. Monsieur
George fell asleep before he could feel any pang at that
intelligence. A sort of confused surprise was in his mind
but nothing else, and then his eyes closed. The awakening
was another matter. But that, too, Mills had foreseen.
For days he attended the bedside patiently letting the
man in the bed talk to him of Do<n~>a Rita but saying little
himself; till one day he was asked pointedly whether
she had ever talked to him openly. And then he said
that she had, on more than one occasion. ``She told me
amongst other things,'' Mills said, ``if this is any satisfaction
to you to know, that till she met you she knew nothing
of love. That you were to her in more senses than one
a complete revelation.''

  ``And then she went away. Ran away from the revelation,''
 said the man in the bed bitterly.

  ``What's the good of being angry?'' remonstrated Mills,
gently. ``You know that this world is not a world for
lovers, not even for such lovers as you two who have
nothing to do with the world as it is. No, a world of
lovers would be impossible. It would be a mere ruin of
lives which seem to be meant for something else. What
this something is, I don't know; and I am certain,'' he
said with playful compassion, ``that she and you will
never find out.''

  A few days later they were again talking of Do<n~>a Rita.
Mills said:

  ``Before she left the house she gave me that arrow she
used to wear in her hair to hand over to you as a keepsake
and also to prevent you, she said, from dreaming of her.
This message sounds rather cryptic.''

  ``Oh, I understand perfectly,'' said Monsieur George.
``Don't give me the thing now. Leave it somewhere
where I can find it some day when I am alone. But when
you write to her you may tell her that now at last---surer
than Mr. Blunt's bullet---the arrow has found its mark.
There will be no more dreaming. Tell her. She will
understand.''

  ``I don't even know where she is,'' murmured Mills.

  ``No, but her man of affairs knows. Tell me,
Mills, what will become of her?''

  ``She will be wasted,'' said Mills sadly. ``She is a most
unfortunate creature. Not even poverty could save her
now. She cannot go back to her goats. Yet who can tell?
She may find something in life. She may! It won't be
love. She has sacrificed that chance to the integrity of
your life---heroically. Do you remember telling her
once that you meant to live your life integrally---oh, you
lawless young pedant! Well, she is gone; but you may
be sure that whatever she finds now in life it will not be
peace. You understand me? Not even in a convent.''

  ``She was supremely lovable,'' said the wounded man,
speaking of her as if she were lying dead already on his
oppressed heart.

  ``And elusive,'' struck in Mills in a low voice. ``Some
of them are like that. She will never change. Amid all
the shames and shadows of that life there will always
lie the ray of her perfect honesty. I don't know about
your honesty, but yours will be the easier lot. You will
always have your . . . other love---you pig-headed enthusiast
of the sea.''

  ``Then let me go to it,'' cried the enthusiast. ``Let me
go to it.''

  He went to it as soon as he had strength enough to feel
the crushing weight of his loss (or his gain) fully, and
discovered that he could bear it without flinching. After
this discovery he was fit to face anything. He tells his
correspondent that if he had been more romantic he would
never have looked at any other woman. But on the
contrary. No face worthy of attention escaped him. He
looked at them all; and each reminded him of Do<n~>a Rita,
either by some profound resemblance or by the startling
force of contrast.

  The faithful austerity of the sea protected him from the
rumours that fly on the tongues of men. He never heard
of her. Even the echoes of the sale of the great All<e`>gre
collection failed to reach him. And that event must have
made noise enough in the world. But he never heard.
He does not know. Then, years later, he was deprived
even of the arrow. It was lost to him in a stormy catastrophe;
and he confesses that next day he stood on a
rocky, wind-assaulted shore, looking at the seas raging
over the very spot of his loss and thought that it was well.
It was not a thing that one could leave behind one for
strange hands---for the cold eyes of ignorance. Like
the old King of Thule with the gold goblet of his mistress
he would have had to cast it into the sea, before he died.
He says he smiled at the romantic notion. But what
else could he have done with it?


			THE END



------------------------------------------------------------


  This electronic transcription of Conrad's 'The Arrow of
Gold' is based on the first printed edition, published 1919
by T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, Adelphi Terrace, London, and printed
by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd, London and Aylesbury.

The following changes have been made to the text:

  Page divisions and column titles have been removed.

 All end-of-line hyphenation have been removed, and the de-
hyphenated words placed at the end of the first line. The
guide for whether to keep or remove the hyphen has been the
text itself.

  The following misprints have been corrected:

p. 126, l. -4: Am<e'>r. . .		(was Amer . . .)
p. 255, l. -11: _Quartel Real_		(was Quartel Real)


  However, the copy editing of the book seems a bit
uneven. Although most French and Spanish words are set in
italics, there are a number of French words that are not. No
attempt to 'correct' this has been made, as long as the
practice has been consistent.

  ``t<e^>te-<a`>-t<e^>te'' is always written thus, and has not
been changed.

  ``Quartel Real'' occurs twice, but only once in
italics. (See attempted correction above.)

  ``Headquarters'' is sometimes given in lower case, but
apparently not consistently. No change attempted.

  One word appears once as ``one-idead'', once as
``one-ideaed''. No correction attempted.


  The following markup has been added:

  Each paragraph begins with two spaces indentation.

  _ _  indicates text in italics
  = =  indicates texts in small caps (extra emphasis)

  <a`>  a-grave
  <a^>  a-circumflex
  <c,>  c-cedilla
  <C,>  C-cedilla
  <e`>  e-grave
  <e'>  e-acute
  <e^>  e-circumflex
  <i^>  i-circumflex
  <n~>	n-tilde
  <oe>  oe-ligature
  <o^>  o-circumflex

  *	in an otherwise empty lines indicates an
	empty line/small separation between paragraphs.


Revision history:
=================

Version:	1.0	1995-01-01
Version:	1.1	1995-09-15	removed extra spaces
					repackaged as single
					  text file


  The transcription and proof-reading was done by Anders
Thulin, Rydsvagen 288, S-582 58 Linkoping, Sweden. (Email:
ath@linkoping.trab.se)

  As far as I am concerned, this edition is entirely free,
and may be used for any purpose whatever.

  I'd be glad to hear of any errors or omissions you might
find.