l was this, that she had accepted the
student's comradeship because in a kind of good-natured way she had
reckoned the conversation of even a poor man more entertaining than the
remembrance of a necklace. And next morning when she had got back home,
she had found herself a little surprised at her own conduct. She felt
that she had shown a generosity, a fanciful whim such as perhaps might
have driven a critic like Sarcey, after forty years of the real theater,
to some miserable little puppet-show. At all events the thing should
never happen again. It was absurd!

Next day, Teodora had informed her that Darles had come to see her while
she had been out. Day after day, the same thing had occurred. The girl
had ended up by feeling very much annoyed at the young fellow's sad
obstinacy. A veritable beggar for love, he had come to trouble the easy
currents of her idleness. Every time Teodora had told her the student
had been back again, Alicia had grown angry.

"What the devil does he want, anyhow?" she would exclaim. "Blest if _I_
know!"

In this she was really sincere. She did not know. The selfish frivolity
of her disposition could not understand how any man, after having
received the supreme gift from a woman, could do other than get tired of
her. Darles' note, complaining of her desertion of him, increased her
annoyance. Once for all she felt she must cut this entanglement. What
better way could there be than to receive the importunate young fellow
and talk to him in a perfectly impersonal way, as if no secret existed
between them?

When Darles arrived, next day, at the usual time, Teodora led him into
the dining-room.

"I'll tell mistress you're here," said she.

Darles remained standing there, reflective, one elbow leaning against
the window-jamb. Once, when he had been nothing but "Don Manuel's
friend," Alicia had used to receive him informally. Nobody had announced
him, then. Now he felt himself isolated, stifled by that kind of
friendly hostility used on boresome callers. The maid came back and
said:

"Mistress will see you. Come this way."

Darles found the girl in her little boudoir, together with a tall,
dark-haired girl, dressed in gray. This girl wore English-looking,
mannish clothes, well set off by her red tie and by the whiteness of her
starched collar and cuffs. When Alicia saw the student, she neither
moved nor stretched out her hand to him. All she said was:

"Hello, there! Is that you?"

Som