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 every one. Every one. 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, Doña 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, Señor,” 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, Doña 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 chimed 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