wentieth 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: "Senor, 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,