ys hearing guns."

Mon turned and looked at him and there was a suggestion of melancholy in
his smile.

"Ah! Ramon," he said. "You and I have heard them all our lives."

And there was perhaps a second meaning in his words, known only to
Sarrion, whose face softened for an instant.

"Let us have some coffee," he said, turning to Cousin Peligros. "Will you
see to it, Peligros--in the library?"

So Peligros walked across the broad terrace with the mincing steps taught
in the thirties, leaving Mon hatless with a bowed head according to the
etiquette of those leisurely days. He was all things, to all men.

"By the way ..." said Sarrion, and followed her without completing his
sentence.

So Juanita and Evasio Mon were left alone on the terrace. Juanita was
sitting rather upright in a garden chair. The only seat near to her was
the easy chair just vacated by Cousin Peligros. Mon looked at it. He
glanced at Juanita and then drew it forward. She turned, and with a smile
and gesture invited him to be seated. A watchful look came into Evasio
Mon's quick eyes behind the glasses that reflected the last rays of the
setting sun. For the young and the guilty, silence has a special terror.
Mon had dealt with the young and the guilty all his life. He sat down
without speaking. He was waiting for Juanita. Juanita moved her toe
within her neat black slipper, looking at it critically. She was waiting
for Evasio Mon. He paused as a duellist may pause with his best weapons
laid out on the table before him, wondering which one to select. Perhaps
he suspected that Juanita held the keenest; that deadly plain-speaking.

His subtle training had taught him to sink self so completely that it was
easy to him to insinuate his mind into the thoughts of another; to
understand them, almost to sympathise with them. But Juanita puzzled him.
There is no face so baffling as that which a woman shows the world when
she is hiding her heart.

"I spoke as a friend," said Mon, "when I recommended you to allow me to
escort you to Pampeluna."

"I know that you always speak as a friend," answered Juanita quietly,
"... of mine. Not of Marcos, perhaps."

"Ah, but your friends are Marcos'," said Mon, with a suggestion of
raillery in his voice.

"And his enemies are mine," she retorted, looking straight in front of
her.

"Of course--is it not written in the marriage service?" Mon laughingly
turned in his chair and cast a glance up at the windows as he spo