which she depended for
her future. She knew the caution of his nature, she realized how he
would take one step forward and another step back, and maybe get nowhere
in the end, and she wanted him--for a home, for her father's sake, for
what he could do for them both. She had no compunctions. She thought
herself too good for him, in a way, for in her day men of place and mark
had taken notice of her; and if it had not been for her Gonzales she
would no doubt have listened to one of them sometime or another. She
knew she had ability, even though she was indolent, and she thought she
could do as much for him as any other girl. If she gave him a handsome
wife and handsome children, and made men envious of him, and filled him
with good things, for she could cook more than tortillas-she felt he
would have no right to complain. She meant him to marry her--and Quebec
was very near!

"A beggar in a strange land, without a home, without a friend--oh, my
broken life!" she whispered wistfully to the sunset.

It was not all acting, for the past reached out and swept over her,
throwing waves of its troubles upon the future. She was that saddest of
human beings, a victim of dual forces which so fought for mastery
with each other that, while the struggle went on, the soul had no firm
foothold anywhere. That, indeed, was why her Carvillho Gonzales, who
also had been dual in nature, said to himself so often, "I am a devil,"
and nearly as often, "I have the heart of an angel."

"Tell me all about your life, my friend," Jean Jacques said eagerly.
Now his eyes no longer hurried here and there, but fastened on hers and
stayed thereabouts--ah, her face surely was like pictures he had seen in
the Louvre that day when he had ambled through the aisles of great men's
glories with the feeling that he could not see too much for nothing in
an hour.

"My life? Ah, m'sieu', has not my father told you of it?" she asked.

He waved a hand in explanation, he cocked his head quizzically.
"Scraps--like the buttons on a coat here and there--that's all,"
he answered. "Born in Andalusia, lived in Cadiz, plenty of money,
a beautiful home,"--Carmen's eyes drooped, and her face flushed
slightly--"no brothers or sisters--visits to Madrid on political
business--you at school--then the going of your mother, and you at home
at the head of the house. So much on the young shoulders, the kitchen,
the parlour, the market, the shop, society--and so on. That is the wa