of exaltation and depression from which I tried to take refuge in conversation; but Senor Ortega was not stimulating.  He was preoccupied with personal matters.  When suddenly he asked me whether I knew why he had been called away from his work (he had been buying supplies from peasants somewhere in Central France), I answered that I didn’t know what the reason was originally, but I had an idea that the present intention was to make of him a courier, bearing certain messages from Baron H. to the Quartel Real in Tolosa.

He glared at me like a basilisk.  “And why have I been met like this?” he enquired with an air of being prepared to hear a lie.

I explained that it was the Baron’s wish, as a matter of prudence and to avoid any possible trouble which might arise from enquiries by the police.

He took it badly.  “What nonsense.”  He was—­he said—­an employe (for several years) of Hernandez Brothers in Paris, an importing firm, and he was travelling on their business—­as he could prove.  He dived into his side pocket and produced a handful of folded papers of all sorts which he plunged back again instantly.

And even then I didn’t know whom I had there, opposite me, busy now devouring a slice of pate de foie gras.  Not in the least.  It never entered my head.  How could it?  The Rita that haunted me had no history; she was but the principle of life charged with fatality.  Her form was only a mirage of desire decoying one step by step into despair.

Senor Ortega gulped down some more wine and suggested I should tell him who I was.  “It’s only right I should know,” he added.

This could not be gainsaid; and to a man connected with the Carlist organization the shortest way was to introduce myself as that “Monsieur George” of whom he had probably heard.

He leaned far over the table, till his very breast-bone was over the edge, as though his eyes had been stilettos and he wanted to drive them home into my brain.  It was only much later that I understood how near death I had been at that moment.  But the knives on the tablecloth were the usual restaurant knives with rounded ends and about as deadly as pieces of hoop-iron.  Perhaps in the very gust of his fury he remembered what a French restaurant knife is like and something sane within him made him give up the sudden project of cutting my heart out where I sat.  For it could have been nothing but a sudden impulse.  His settled purpose was quite other.  It was not my heart that he was after.  His fingers indeed were groping amongst the knife handles by the side of his plate but what captivated my attention for a moment were his red lips which were formed into an odd, sly, insinuating smile.  Heard!  To be sure he had heard!  The chief of the great arms smuggling organization!

“Oh!” I said, “that’s giving me too much importance.”  The person responsible and whom I looked upon as chief of all the business was, as he might have heard, too, a certain noble and loyal lady.