by the chill and foreboding
which seemed to emanate from Chonita and pervade the house. I knew
that terrible calm was like the menacing stillness of the hours before
an earthquake. What would she do in the coming convulsion? I shuddered
and tormented myself with many imaginings.

I became so nervous that I rose and dressed and went out upon the
corridor and walked up and down. It was very late, and the moon was
risen, but the corners were dark. Figures seemed to start from them,
but my nerves were strong; I never had given way to fear.

My thoughts wandered to Estenega. Who shall judge the complex heart
of a man? the deep, intense, lasting devotion he may have for the one
woman he recognizes as his soul's own, and yet the strange wayward
wanderings of his fancy,--the nomadic assertion of the animal; the
passionate love he may feel for this woman of all women, yet the
reserve in which he always holds her, never knowing her quite as well
as he has known other women; the last test of highest love, passion
without sensuality? And yet the regret that she does not gratify every
side of his nature, even while he would not have her; regret for the
terrible incongruity of human nature, the mingling of the beast and
the divine, which cannot find satisfaction in the same woman; whatever
the fire in her, she cannot gratify the instincts which rage below
passion in man, without losing the purity of mind which he adores in
her. She, too, feels a vague regret that some portion of his nature
is a sealed book to her, forever beyond her ken. But her regret is
nothing to his: he knows, and she does not.

My meditations were interrupted suddenly. I heard a door stealthily
opened. I knew before turning that the door was that of Chonita's
room, the last at the end of the right wing. It opened, and she came
out. It was as if a face alone came out. She was shrouded from head to
foot in black, and her face was as white as the moon. Possessed by a
nameless but overwhelming fear, I turned the knob of the door nearest
me and almost fell into the room. I closed the door behind me, but
there was no key. By the strip of white light which entered through
the crevice between the half-open shutters I saw that I was in the
room of Valencia Menendez; but she slept soundly and had not heard me.

I stood still, listening, for many minutes. At first there was no
sound; I evidently had startled her, and she was waiting for the house
to be still again. At