that can be touched with grace or go to perdition; and he doesn’t want to be damned with me before his own judgment seat.  He is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have my own Basque peasant soul and don’t want to think that every time he goes away from my feet—­yes, mon cher, on this carpet, look for the marks of scorching—­that he goes away feeling tempted to brush the dust off his moral sleeve.  That!  Never!”

With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of the box, held it in her fingers for a moment, then dropped it unconsciously.

“And then, I don’t love him,” she uttered slowly as if speaking to herself and at the same time watching the very quality of that thought.  “I never did.  At first he fascinated me with his fatal aspect and his cold society smiles.  But I have looked into those eyes too often.  There are too many disdains in this aristocratic republican without a home.  His fate may be cruel, but it will always be commonplace.  While he sat there trying in a worldly tone to explain to me the problems, the scruples, of his suffering honour, I could see right into his heart and I was sorry for him.  I was sorry enough for him to feel that if he had suddenly taken me by the throat and strangled me slowly, avec delices, I could forgive him while I choked.  How correct he was!  But bitterness against me peeped out of every second phrase.  At last I raised my hand and said to him, ‘Enough.’  I believe he was shocked by my plebeian abruptness but he was too polite to show it.  His conventions will always stand in the way of his nature.  I told him that everything that had been said and done during the last seven or eight months was inexplicable unless on the assumption that he was in love with me,—­and yet in everything there was an implication that he couldn’t forgive me my very existence.  I did ask him whether he didn’t think that it was absurd on his part . . . "

“Didn’t you say that it was exquisitely absurd?” I asked.

“Exquisitely! . . . " Dona Rita was surprised at my question.  “No.  Why should I say that?”

“It would have reconciled him to your abruptness.  It’s their family expression.  It would have come with a familiar sound and would have been less offensive.”

“Offensive,” Dona Rita repeated earnestly.  “I don’t think he was offended; he suffered in another way, but I didn’t care for that.  It was I that had become offended in the end, without spite, you understand, but past bearing.  I didn’t spare him.  I told him plainly that to want a woman formed in mind and body, mistress of herself, free in her choice, independent in her thoughts; to love her apparently for what she is and at the same time to demand from her the candour and the innocence that could be only a shocking pretence; to know her such as life had made her and at the same time to despise her secretly for every touch with which her life had fashioned her—­that was neither