aughed 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.
Dona 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.
Dona 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