After this declaration she began to clear the table, preserving a thoughtful silence.

I was not very surprised at the news of Dona Rita’s departure for Paris.  It was not necessary to ask myself why she had gone.  I didn’t even ask myself whether she had left the leased Villa on the Prado for ever.  Later talking again with Therese, I learned that her sister had given it up for the use of the Carlist cause and that some sort of unofficial Consul, a Carlist agent of some sort, either was going to live there or had already taken possession.  This, Rita herself had told her before her departure on that agitated morning spent in the house—­in my rooms.  A close investigation demonstrated to me that there was nothing missing from them.  Even the wretched match-box which I really hoped was gone turned up in a drawer after I had, delightedly, given it up.  It was a great blow.  She might have taken that at least!  She knew I used to carry it about with me constantly while ashore.  She might have taken it!  Apparently she meant that there should be no bond left even of that kind; and yet it was a long time before I gave up visiting and revisiting all the corners of all possible receptacles for something that she might have left behind on purpose.  It was like the mania of those disordered minds who spend their days hunting for a treasure.  I hoped for a forgotten hairpin, for some tiny piece of ribbon.  Sometimes at night I reflected that such hopes were altogether insensate; but I remember once getting up at two in the morning to search for a little cardboard box in the bathroom, into which, I remembered, I had not looked before.  Of course it was empty; and, anyway, Rita could not possibly have known of its existence.  I got back to bed shivering violently, though the night was warm, and with a distinct impression that this thing would end by making me mad.  It was no longer a question of “this sort of thing” killing me.  The moral atmosphere of this torture was different.  It would make me mad.  And at that thought great shudders ran down my prone body, because, once, I had visited a famous lunatic asylum where they had shown me a poor wretch who was mad, apparently, because he thought he had been abominably fooled by a woman.  They told me that his grievance was quite imaginary.  He was a young man with a thin fair beard, huddled up on the edge of his bed, hugging himself forlornly; and his incessant and lamentable wailing filled the long bare corridor, striking a chill into one’s heart long before one came to the door of his cell.

And there was no one from whom I could hear, to whom I could speak, with whom I could evoke the image of Rita.  Of course I could utter that word of four letters to Therese; but Therese for some reason took it into her head to avoid all topics connected with her sister.  I felt as if I could pull out great handfuls of her hair hidden modestly under the black handkerchief of which the ends were sometimes tied