ose wet things of yours; you're not going to
catch pneumonia on my account, and thus deprive the city of its one
bright spot. Here's something to put on while we are drying your
clothes."

And she offered the barber a magnificent gown of blue velvet, with
veritable cascades of lace at the breast and on the sleeves.

Cupido nearly fell off his chair.... Was he going to dress in top style
for once in his life? And with those side-whiskers?... How the people in
Alcira would howl if they could only see him now! And entering at once
into the fun of the situation, he hastened into the next room to don his
gown.

"For you," Leonora said to Rafael with a motherly smile, "I could find
only this fur cloak. Come, now, take off that jacket of yours; it's
dripping wet."

With a blush, the young man refused. No, he was all right! Nothing would
happen to him! He had been wetter than that many times.

Leonora without losing her smile, seemed to grow impatient. No one in
that house ever talked back to her.

"Come, Rafael, don't be so silly. We'll have to treat you like a child."

And taking him by a sleeve, as if he were a refractory baby, she began
to pull at his jacket.

The young man, in his confusion, was hardly aware of what was taking
place. He seemed to be traveling along on an endless horizon, at greater
speed than he had been swept down the river just before. She had called
him by his first name; he was a pampered guest in a house he had for
months been trying in vain to enter, and she, Leonora, was calling him
"child" and treating him like a child, as if they had been friends all
their lives. What sort of woman was this? Was he not lost in some
strange world? The women of the city--the girls he met at the parties at
his home, seemed to be creatures of another race, living far, ever so
far, away, at the other end of the earth, cut off from him forever by
that immense sheet of water.

"Come, Mr. Obstinate, or we'll have to undress you like a doll."

She was bending over him; he could feel her breath upon his cheeks, and
the touch of her delicate, agile hands; and a sense of delicious
intoxication swept over him.

The fur coat was drawn snugly about his shoulders. It was a rare
garment; a cloak of blue fox as soft as silk, thick, yet light as the
plumes of some fantastic bird. Though Rafael passed for a tall man, its
edges touched the floor. The young man realized that thousands of francs
had suddenly been thrown ov