f moment that his arm had encircled her waist by the crumbling
wall, and his pulses grew languid, only to leap firmer the next moment
with more desperate resolve. He would win her, come what may! He
could never have been in earnest before: he loathed and hated himself
for his previous passive acquiescence to her fate. He had been a weak
tool of the colonel's from the first: he was even now handicapped by a
preposterous promise he had given him! Yes, she was right to
hesitate--to question his ability to make her happy! He had found her
here, surrounded by stupidity and cupidity--to give it no other
name--so patent that she was the common gossip, and had offered nothing
but a boyish declaration! As he strode into the hotel that night it
was well that he did not meet the unfortunate colonel on the staircase!

It was very late, although there was still visible a light in Yerba's
salon, shining on her balcony, which extended before and included his
own window. From time to time he could hear the murmur of voices. It
was too late to avail himself of the invitation to join them, even if
his frame of mind had permitted it. He was too nervous and excited to
go to bed, and, without lighting his candle, he opened the French
window that gave upon the balcony, drew a chair in the recess behind
the curtain, and gazed upon the night. It was very quiet; the moon was
high, the square was sleeping in a trance of checkered shadows, like a
gigantic chessboard, with black foreshortened trees for pawns. The
click of a cavalry sabre, the sound of a footfall on the pavement of
the distant Konigsstrasse, were distinctly audible; a far-off railway
whistle was startling in its abruptness. In the midst of this calm the
opening of the door of the salon, with the sudden uplifting of voices
in the hall, told Paul that Yerba's guests were leaving. He heard Dona
Anna's arch accents--arch even to Colonel Pendleton's monotonous
baritone!--Milly's high, rapid utterances, the suave falsetto of Don
Caesar, and HER voice, he thought a trifle wearied,--the sound of
retiring footsteps, and all was still again.

So still that the rhythmic beat of the distant waltz returned to him,
with a distinctiveness that he could idly follow. He thought of
Rosario and the rose-breath of the open windows with a strange longing,
and remembered the half-stifled sweetness of her happy voice rising
with it from the veranda. Why had he ever let it pass from him the