“Yes, but I was given to understand that Madame de Lastaola was to leave Paris either yesterday or this morning.”

It was my turn to stare dumbly before I could manage to ask:  “For Tolosa?” in a very knowing tone.

Whether it was the droop of his head, play of light, or some other subtle cause, his nose seemed to have grown perceptibly longer.

“That, Senor, is the place where the news has got to be conveyed without undue delay,” he said in an agitated wheeze.  “I could, of course, telegraph to our agent in Bayonne who would find a messenger.  But I don’t like, I don’t like!  The Alphonsists have agents, too, who hang about the telegraph offices.  It’s no use letting the enemy get that news.”

He was obviously very confused, unhappy, and trying to think of two different things at once.

“Sit down, Don George, sit down.”  He absolutely forced a cigar on me.  “I am extremely distressed.  That—­I mean Dona Rita is undoubtedly on her way to Tolosa.  This is very frightful.”

I must say, however, that there was in the man some sense of duty.  He mastered his private fears.  After some cogitation he murmured:  “There is another way of getting the news to Headquarters.  Suppose you write me a formal letter just stating the facts, the unfortunate facts, which I will be able to forward.  There is an agent of ours, a fellow I have been employing for purchasing supplies, a perfectly honest man.  He is coming here from the north by the ten o’clock train with some papers for me of a confidential nature.  I was rather embarrassed about it.  It wouldn’t do for him to get into any sort of trouble.  He is not very intelligent.  I wonder, Don George, whether you would consent to meet him at the station and take care of him generally till to-morrow.  I don’t like the idea of him going about alone.  Then, to-morrow night, we would send him on to Tolosa by the west coast route, with the news; and then he can also call on Dona Rita who will no doubt be already there. . . .”  He became again distracted all in a moment and actually went so far as to wring his fat hands.  “Oh, yes, she will be there!” he exclaimed in most pathetic accents.

I was not in the humour to smile at anything, and he must have been satisfied with the gravity with which I beheld his extraordinary antics.  My mind was very far away.  I thought:  Why not?  Why shouldn’t I also write a letter to Dona Rita, telling her that now nothing stood in the way of my leaving Europe, because, really, the enterprise couldn’t be begun again; that things that come to an end can never be begun again.  The idea—­never again—­had complete possession of my mind.  I could think of nothing else.  Yes, I would write.  The worthy Commissary General of the Carlist forces was under the impression that I was looking at him; but what I had in my eye was a jumble of butterfly women and winged youths and the soft sheen of Argand lamps gleaming on an arrow of gold in the hair of a head that seemed to evade my outstretched hand.