remained standing perfectly still, searching me with a gaze that left
me naked of levity and cynicism and the veneer of life; and finally she
murmured in a voice sweet with pain:

"Must you kill me with words, Paul? I did not mean that--now. It is
too late."

Then she turned swiftly and called to Harry, who came running over to
her only to meet with some trivial request, and a minute later the
arriero announced dinner.

I suppose that the incident had passed with her, as it had with me;
little did I know how deeply I had wounded her. And when I discovered
my mistake, some time later and under very different circumstances, it
very nearly cost me my life, and Harry's into the bargain.

During the meal Le Mire was in the jolliest of moods apparently. She
retold the tale of Balzac's heroine who crossed the Andes in the guise
of a Spanish officer, performing wondrous exploits with her sword and
creating havoc among the hearts of the fair ladies who took the dashing
captain's sex for granted from his clothing.

The story was a source of intense amusement to Harry, who insisted on
the recital of detail after detail, until Desiree allowed her memory to
take a vacation and substitute pure imagination. Nor was the
improvisation much inferior to the original.

It was still light when we finished dinner, a good three hours till
bedtime. And since there was nothing better to do, I called to the
arriero and asked him to conduct us on a tour of exploration among the
mass of boulders, gray and stern, that loomed up on our right.

He nodded his head in his usual indifferent manner, and fifteen minutes
later we started, on foot. The arriero led the way, with Harry at his
heels, and Desiree and I brought up the rear.

Thrice I tried to enter into conversation with her; but each time she
shook her head without turning round, and I gave it up. I was frankly
puzzled by her words and conduct of an hour before; was it merely one
of the trickeries of Le Mire or--

I was interested in the question as one is always interested in a
riddle; but I tossed it from my mind, promising myself a solution on
the morrow, and gave my attention to the vagaries of nature about me.

We were passing through a cleft between two massive rocks, some three
or four hundred yards in length. Ahead of us, at the end of the
passage, a like boulder fronted us.

Our footfalls echoed and reechoed from wall to wall; the only other
sound was the eery mo