“I have submitted to much,” she answered in a low voice.

“The inevitable, of course.  But to keep a maid whom you can turn away at any moment—­”

“Yes—­but can I?” She stopped and looked at him.  “Oh, if I only could—­if you knew how I hate the woman—­”

“But then—­”

“Yes?”

“Do you mean to tell me that you are in some way in her power, so that you are bound to keep her always?”

Maria Consuelo hesitated a moment.

“Are you in her power?” asked Orsino a second time.  He did not like the idea and his black brows bent themselves rather angrily.

“No—­not directly.  She is imposed upon me.”

“By circumstances?”

“No, again.  By a person who has the power to impose much upon me—­but this!  Oh this is almost too much!  To be called mad!”

“Then do not submit to it.”

Orsino spoke decisively, with a kind of authority which surprised himself.  He was amazed and righteously angry at the situation so suddenly revealed to him, undefined as it was.  He saw that he was touching a great trouble and his natural energy bid him lay violent hands on it and root it out if possible.

For some minutes Maria Consuelo did not speak, but continued to pace the room, evidently in great anxiety.  Then she stopped before him.

“It is easy for you to say, ‘do not submit,’ when you do not understand,” she said.  “If you knew what my life is, you would look at this in another way.  I must submit—­I cannot do otherwise.”

“If you would tell me something more, I might help you,” answered Orsino.

“You?” She paused.  “I believe you would, if you could,” she added, thoughtfully.

“You know that I would.  Perhaps I can, as it is, in ignorance, if you will direct me.”

A sudden light gleamed in Maria Consuelo’s eyes and then died away as quickly as it had come.

“After all, what could you do?” she asked with a change of tone, as though she were somehow disappointed.  “What could you do that others would not do as well, if they could, and with a better right?”

“Unless you will tell me, how can I know?”

“Yes—­if I could tell you.”

She went and sat down in her former seat and Orsino took a chair beside her.  He had expected to renew the acquaintance in a very different way, and that he should spend half an hour with Maria Consuelo in talking about apartments, about the heat and about the places she had visited.  Instead, circumstances had made the conversation an intimate one full of an absorbing interest to both.  Orsino found that he had forgotten much which pleased him strangely now that it was again brought before him.  He had forgotten most of all, it seemed, that an unexplained sympathy attracted him to her, and her to him.  He wondered at the strength of it, and found it hard to understand that last meeting with her in the spring.