“He will speak,” came to me the ghostly, terrified murmur of her voice.  “Take me out of the house before he begins to speak.”

“Keep still,” I whispered.  “He will soon get tired of this.”

“You don’t know him.”

“Oh, yes, I do.  Been with him two hours.”

At this she let go my wrist and covered her face with her hands passionately.  When she dropped them she had the look of one morally crushed.

“What did he say to you?”

“He raved.”

“Listen to me.  It was all true!”

“I daresay, but what of that?”

These ghostly words passed between us hardly louder than thoughts; but after my last answer she ceased and gave me a searching stare, then drew in a long breath.  The voice on the other side of the door burst out with an impassioned request for a little pity, just a little, and went on begging for a few words, for two words, for one word—­one poor little word.  Then it gave up, then repeated once more, “Say you are there, Rita, Say one word, just one word.  Say ‘yes.’  Come!  Just one little yes.”

“You see,” I said.  She only lowered her eyelids over the anxious glance she had turned on me.

For a minute we could have had the illusion that he had stolen away, unheard, on the thick mats.  But I don’t think that either of us was deceived.  The voice returned, stammering words without connection, pausing and faltering, till suddenly steadied it soared into impassioned entreaty, sank to low, harsh tones, voluble, lofty sometimes and sometimes abject.  When it paused it left us looking profoundly at each other.

“It’s almost comic,” I whispered.

“Yes.  One could laugh,” she assented, with a sort of sinister conviction.  Never had I seen her look exactly like that, for an instant another, an incredible Rita!  “Haven’t I laughed at him innumerable times?” she added in a sombre whisper.

He was muttering to himself out there, and unexpectedly shouted:  “What?” as though he had fancied he had heard something.  He waited a while before he started up again with a loud:  “Speak up, Queen of the goats, with your goat tricks. . .”  All was still for a time, then came a most awful bang on the door.  He must have stepped back a pace to hurl himself bodily against the panels.  The whole house seemed to shake.  He repeated that performance once more, and then varied it by a prolonged drumming with his fists.  It was comic.  But I felt myself struggling mentally with an invading gloom as though I were no longer sure of myself.

“Take me out,” whispered Dona Rita feverishly, “take me out of this house before it is too late.”

“You will have to stand it,” I answered.

“So be it; but then you must go away yourself.  Go now, before it is too late.”

I didn’t condescend to answer this.  The drumming on the panels stopped and the absurd thunder of it died out in the house.  I don’t know why precisely then I had the acute vision of the red mouth of Jose Ortega wriggling with rage between his funny whiskers.  He began afresh but in a tired tone: