“And then, what a woman!  I have been young, like you, Rafael.  It’s true I didn’t know a stylish woman like this one, but, bah! they’re all alike.  I have had my weaknesses; but I tell you I wouldn’t have lifted a finger for this actress of yours!  Any one of the girls we have down home is worth two of her.  Clothes, yes, talk, yes, powder and rouge inches deep!...  I’m not saying she’s bad to look at—­not that; what I say is... well, it doesn’t take much to turn your head—­you’re satisfied with the leavings of half the men in Europe....”

And he came to Leonora’s past, the lurid, much exaggerated legend of her journey through life—­lovers by the dozens; statues and paintings of her in the nude; the eyes of all Europe centered on her beauty; the public property of a continent!  “That was virtue to go crazy about, come now!  Quite worth leaving house and home for, no doubt of that!”

The old man winced under the flash of anger that blazed in Rafael’s eyes.  They had just crossed another bridge, and were entering the city again.  Don Andres, wretched coward that he was, sidled away to be within reach of the customs’ office if the fist he could already see cleaving the air should come his way.

Rafael, in fact, stopped in his tracks, glaring.  But in a second or two he went on his way again, dejected, with bowed head, ignoring the presence of the old man.  Don Andres resumed his place at the boy’s side.

The cursed old fox!  He had stuck the knife in the right place!  Leonora’s past!  Her favors distributed with mad lavishness over the four corners of the globe!  An army of men of every nation owning her for a moment with the appeal of luxury or the enchantment of art!  A palace today and a hotel tomorrow!  Her lips repeating in all the languages of Babel the very words of love that had fired him as if he had been the first to hear them!  He was going to lose everything for that—­that refuse, as don Andres said—­a public scandal, a ruined reputation; and a murdered mother perhaps,—­for that!  Oh, that devil of a don Andres!  How cunningly he had slashed him, and then plunged his fingers into the bleeding gash to make the wound deeper!  The old man’s plain common-sense had shattered his dream.  That man had been the rustic, cunning Sancho at the side of the quixotic don Ramon; and he was playing the same role with Rafael!

Leonora’s story came back to the boy in one flash—­the frank confession she had made during the days of their mere friendship, when she had told him everything to prevent his continuing to desire her.  However much she might adore him, he would be nothing after all but a successor to a Russian count, and a German musician; the latest, simply among those countless ephemeral lovers, whom she had barely mentioned but who must none the less have left some trace in her memory.  The last item in a long inventory!  The most recent arrival, coming several years late, and content to nibble at the soggy