He shook his head.

“I feel that you of all people, Dona Rita, ought to be told the truth.  I don’t know exactly what you have at stake.”

She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in the flush of the dawn.

“Not my heart,” she said quietly.  “You must believe that.”

“I do.  Perhaps it would have been better if you. . . "

“No, Monsieur le Philosophe.  It would not have been better.  Don’t make that serious face at me,” she went on with tenderness in a playful note, as if tenderness had been her inheritance of all time and playfulness the very fibre of her being.  “I suppose you think that a woman who has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on it is . . .  How do you know to what the heart responds as it beats from day to day?”

“I wouldn’t judge you.  What am I before the knowledge you were born to?  You are as old as the world.”

She accepted this with a smile.  I who was innocently watching them was amazed to discover how much a fleeting thing like that could hold of seduction without the help of any other feature and with that unchanging glance.

“With me it is pun d’onor.  To my first independent friend.”

“You were soon parted,” ventured Mills, while I sat still under a sense of oppression.

“Don’t think for a moment that I have been scared off,” she said.  “It is they who were frightened.  I suppose you heard a lot of Headquarters gossip?”

“Oh, yes,” Mills said meaningly.  “The fair and the dark are succeeding each other like leaves blown in the wind dancing in and out.  I suppose you have noticed that leaves blown in the wind have a look of happiness.”

“Yes,” she said, “that sort of leaf is dead.  Then why shouldn’t it look happy?  And so I suppose there is no uneasiness, no occasion for fears amongst the ‘responsibles.’”

“Upon the whole not.  Now and then a leaf seems as if it would stick.  There is for instance Madame . . .”

“Oh, I don’t want to know, I understand it all, I am as old as the world.”

“Yes,” said Mills thoughtfully, “you are not a leaf, you might have been a tornado yourself.”

“Upon my word,” she said, “there was a time that they thought I could carry him off, away from them all—­beyond them all.  Verily, I am not very proud of their fears.  There was nothing reckless there worthy of a great passion.  There was nothing sad there worthy of a great tenderness.”

“And is this the word of the Venetian riddle?” asked Mills, fixing her with his keen eyes.

“If it pleases you to think so, Senor,” she said indifferently.  The movement of her eyes, their veiled gleam became mischievous when she asked, “And Don Juan Blunt, have you seen him over there?”

“I fancy he avoided me.  Moreover, he is always with his regiment at the outposts.  He is a most valorous captain.  I heard some people describe him as foolhardy.”