I did not pretend to understand her.  Perhaps, after all, we all had been misinformed regarding her?  I could not tell.  But her spirit of camaraderie, her good fellowship, her courage, quite aside from her personal charm, had now begun to impress me.

“Madam,” said I, feeling in my pocket; “no heathen has much of this world’s goods.  All my possessions would not furnish one of these rooms.  I can not offer gems, as does Senor Yturrio—­but, would this be of service—­until to-morrow?  That will leave him and me with a slipper each.  It is with reluctance I pledge to return mine!”

By chance I had felt in my pocket a little object which I had placed there that very day for quite another purpose.  It was only a little trinket of Indian manufacture, which I had intended to give Elisabeth that very evening; a sort of cloak clasp, originally made as an Indian blanket fastening, with two round discs ground out of shells and connected by beaded thongs.  I had got it among the tribes of the far upper plains, who doubtless obtained the shells, in their strange savage barter, in some way from the tribes of Florida or Texas, who sometimes trafficked in shells which found their way as far north as the Saskatchewan.  The trinket was curious, though of small value.  The baroness looked at it with interest.

“How it reminds me of this heathen country!” she said.  “Is this all that your art can do in jewelry?  Yet it is beautiful.  Come, will you not give it to me?”

“Until to-morrow, Madam.”

“No longer?”

“I can not promise it longer.  I must, unfortunately, have it back when I send a messenger—­I shall hardly come myself, Madam.”

“Ah!” she scoffed.  “Then it belongs to another woman?”

“Yes, it is promised to another.”

“Then this is to be the last time we meet?”

“I do not doubt it.”

“Are you not sorry?”

“Naturally, Madam!”

She sighed, laughing as she did so.  Yet I could not evade seeing the curious color on her cheek, the rise and fall of the laces over her bosom.  Utterly self-possessed, satisfied with life as it had come to her, without illusion as to life, absorbed in the great game of living and adventuring—­so I should have described her.  Then why should her heart beat one stroke the faster now?  I dismissed that question, and rebuked my eyes, which I found continually turning toward her.

She motioned to a little table near by.  “Put the slipper there,” she said.  “Your little neck clasp, also.”  Again I obeyed her.

“Stand there!” she said, motioning to the opposite side of the table; and I did so.  “Now,” said she, looking at me gravely, “I am going with you to see this man whom you call your chief—­this old and ugly man, thin and weazened, with no blood in him, and a woolen nightcap which is perhaps red.  I shall not tell you whether I go of my own wish or because you wish it.  But I need soberly to tell you this:  secrecy is as necessary for me as for you.  The favor may mean as much on one side as on the other—­I shall not tell you why.  But we shall play fair until, as you say, perhaps to-morrow.  After that—­”