s 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, Dona 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 Dona 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