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 had 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 Senor Ortega should never even catch a glimpse of Dona 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 Dona 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 Dona 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, Dona 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,
Dona 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
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. Dona 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. Dona 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 aesthetic 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 Dona 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.”
