“That, of course, I can’t say,” I retorted.

“I haven’t seen her for years,” he said, “and in comparison with what she was then she must be very grown up by now.  From what we heard from Mr. Blunt she had experiences which would have matured her more than they would teach her.  There are of course people that are not teachable.  I don’t know that she is one of them.  But as to maturity that’s quite another thing.  Capacity for suffering is developed in every human being worthy of the name.”

“Captain Blunt doesn’t seem to be a very happy person,” I said.  “He seems to have a grudge against everybody.  People make him wince.  The things they do, the things they say.  He must be awfully mature.”

Mills gave me a sidelong look.  It met mine of the same character and we both smiled without openly looking at each other.  At the end of the Rue de Rome the violent chilly breath of the mistral enveloped the victoria in a great widening of brilliant sunshine without heat.  We turned to the right, circling at a stately pace about the rather mean obelisk which stands at the entrance to the Prado.

“I don’t know whether you are mature or not,” said Mills humorously.  “But I think you will do.  You . . . "

“Tell me,” I interrupted, “what is really Captain Blunt’s position there?”

And I nodded at the alley of the Prado opening before us between the rows of the perfectly leafless trees.

“Thoroughly false, I should think.  It doesn’t accord either with his illusions or his pretensions, or even with the real position he has in the world.  And so what between his mother and the General Headquarters and the state of his own feelings he. . . "

“He is in love with her,” I interrupted again.

“That wouldn’t make it any easier.  I’m not at all sure of that.  But if so it can’t be a very idealistic sentiment.  All the warmth of his idealism is concentrated upon a certain ’Americain, Catholique et gentil-homme. . . ’”

The smile which for a moment dwelt on his lips was not unkind.

“At the same time he has a very good grip of the material conditions that surround, as it were, the situation.”

“What do you mean?  That Dona Rita” (the name came strangely familiar to my tongue) “is rich, that she has a fortune of her own?”

“Yes, a fortune,” said Mills.  “But it was Allegre’s fortune before. . .  And then there is Blunt’s fortune:  he lives by his sword.  And there is the fortune of his mother, I assure you a perfectly charming, clever, and most aristocratic old lady, with the most distinguished connections.  I really mean it.  She doesn’t live by her sword.  She . . . she lives by her wits.  I have a notion that those two dislike each other heartily at times. . .  Here we are.”

The victoria stopped in the side alley, bordered by the low walls of private grounds.  We got out before a wrought-iron gateway which stood half open and walked up a circular drive to the door of a large villa of a neglected appearance.  The mistral howled in the sunshine, shaking the bare bushes quite furiously.  And everything was bright and hard, the air was hard, the light was hard, the ground under our feet was hard.