Again I glanced at him sideways.  I was the taller of the two and as it happened I met in the light of the street lamp his own stealthy glance directed up at me with an agonized expression, an expression that made me fancy I could see the man’s very soul writhing in his body like an impaled worm.  In spite of my utter inexperience I had some notion of the images that rushed into his mind at the sight of any man who had approached Dona Rita.  It was enough to awaken in any human being a movement of horrified compassion; but my pity went out not to him but to Dona Rita.  It was for her that I felt sorry; I pitied her for having that damned soul on her track.  I pitied her with tenderness and indignation, as if this had been both a danger and a dishonour.

I don’t mean to say that those thoughts passed through my head consciously.  I had only the resultant, settled feeling.  I had, however, a thought, too.  It came on me suddenly, and I asked myself with rage and astonishment:  “Must I then kill that brute?” There didn’t seem to be any alternative.  Between him and Dona Rita I couldn’t hesitate.  I believe I gave a slight laugh of desperation.  The suddenness of this sinister conclusion had in it something comic and unbelievable.  It loosened my grip on my mental processes.  A Latin tag came into my head about the facile descent into the abyss.  I marvelled at its aptness, and also that it should have come to me so pat.  But I believe now that it was suggested simply by the actual declivity of the street of the Consuls which lies on a gentle slope.  We had just turned the corner.  All the houses were dark and in a perspective of complete solitude our two shadows dodged and wheeled about our feet.

“Here we are,” I said.

He was an extraordinarily chilly devil.  When we stopped I could hear his teeth chattering again.  I don’t know what came over me, I had a sort of nervous fit, was incapable of finding my pockets, let alone the latchkey.  I had the illusion of a narrow streak of light on the wall of the house as if it had been cracked.  “I hope we will be able to get in,” I murmured.

Senor Ortega stood waiting patiently with his handbag, like a rescued wayfarer.  “But you live in this house, don’t you?” he observed.

“No,” I said, without hesitation.  I didn’t know how that man would behave if he were aware that I was staying under the same roof.  He was half mad.  He might want to talk all night, try crazily to invade my privacy.  How could I tell?  Moreover, I wasn’t so sure that I would remain in the house.  I had some notion of going out again and walking up and down the street of the Consuls till daylight.  “No, an absent friend lets me use . . .  I had that latchkey this morning . . .  Ah! here it is.”