“Come, now,” said Leonora gently, “don’t hunt up any far-fetched excuses....  You were coming to bid me good-bye—­and without trying to see me!  What a lot of nonsense!  Why don’t you say right out that you are a victim of this dangerous night—­as I am, too?”

And her eyes, glittering with a tearful gleam, swept the plazoleta, which lay white in the moonlight; and the snowy orange-blossoms, the rose-bushes, the palm-trees, that stood out black against the blue sky where the stars were twinkling like grains of luminous sand.  Her voice trembled with a soft huskiness, as caressing as velvet.

Rafael, quite encouraged by this unexpected reception, tried to beg forgiveness for the madness that had caused his expulsion from the place; but the actress cut him short.

“Let’s not discuss that unpleasant thing!  It hurts me just to think of it.  You’re forgiven; and since you’ve fallen on this spot as though heaven had dropped you here, you may stay a moment.  But ... no liberties.  You know me now.”

And straightening up to her full height as an Amazon sure of herself, she turned to the bench, motioning to Rafael to take a seat at the other end.

“What a night!...  I feel a strange intoxication without wine!  The orange-trees seem to inebriate me with their very breath.  An hour ago my room was whirling round and round, as though I were going to faint.  My bed was like a frail bark tossing in a tempest.  So I came down as I often do; and here you can have me until sleep proves more powerful than the beauty of this beautiful night.”

She spoke with a languid abandonment; her voice quivering, and tremors rippling across her shoulders, as if all the perfume were hurting her, oppressing her powerful vitality.  Rafael sat looking at her over the length of the bench—­a white, sepulchral figure, wrapped in the hooded cape of a dressing-gown—­the first thing she had laid hands upon when she had thought of going out into the garden.

“I was frightened when I saw you,” she continued, in a slow, faint voice.  “A little fright, nothing more!  A natural surprise, I suppose; and yet, I was thinking of you that very moment.  I confess it.  I was saying to myself:  ’What can that crazy boy be doing, at this hour, I wonder?’ And suddenly you appeared, like a ghost.  You couldn’t sleep; you were excited by all this fragrance; and you have come to try your luck anew, with the hope that brought you here at other times.”

She spoke without her usual irony, softly, simply, as if she were talking to herself.  Her body was thrown limply back against the bench, one arm resting behind her head.

Rafael started to speak once more of his repentance, of his desire to kneel in front of the house there in mute entreaty for pardon, while she would be sleeping in the room above.  But Leonora interrupted him again.