The tears came to her eyes when she beheld the room whose furnishings and pictures so vividly recalled the absent.  Argensola hastened from the door at the end of the room, agitated, confused, and greeting her with expressions of welcome at the same time that he was putting sundry objects out of sight.  A woman’s sweater lying on the divan, he covered with a piece of Oriental drapery—­a hat trimmed with flowers, he sent flying into a far-away corner.  Dona Luisa fancied that she saw a bit of gauzy feminine negligee embroidered in pink, flitting past the window frame.  Upon the divan were two big coffee cups and bits of toast evidently left from a double breakfast.  These artists! . . .  The same as her son!  And she was moved to compassion over the bad life of Julio’s counsellor.

“My honored Dona Luisa. . . .  My dear Madame Desnoyers. . . .”

He was speaking in French and at the top of his voice, looking frantically at the door through which the white and rosy garments had flitted.  He was trembling at the thought that his hidden companion, not understanding the situation, might in a jealous fit, compromise him by a sudden apparition.

Then he spoke to his unexpected guest about the soldier, exchanging news with her.  Dona Luisa repeated almost word for word the paragraphs of his letters so frequently read.  Argensola modestly refrained from displaying his; the two friends were accustomed to an epistolary style which would have made the good lady blush.

“A valiant man!” affirmed the Spaniard proudly, looking upon the deeds of his comrade as though they were his own.  “A true hero! and I, Madame Desnoyers, know something about what that means. . . .  His chiefs know how to appreciate him.” . . .

Julio was a sergeant after having been only two months in the campaign.  The captain of his company and the other officials of the regiment belonged to the fencing club in which he had had so many triumphs.

“What a career!” he enthused.  “He is one of those who in youth reach the highest ranks, like the Generals of the Revolution. . . .  And what wonders he has accomplished!”

The budding officer had merely referred in the most casual way to some of exploits, with the indifference of one accustomed to danger and expecting the same attitude from his comrades; but his chum exaggerated them, enlarging upon them as though they were the culminating events of the war.  He had carried an order across an infernal fire, after three messengers, trying to accomplish the same feat, had fallen dead.  He had been the first to attack many trenches and had saved many of his comrades by means of the blows from his bayonet and hand to hand encounters.  Whenever his superior officers needed a reliable man, they invariably said, “Let Sergeant Desnoyers be called!”

He rattled off all this as though he had witnessed it, as if he had just come from the seat of war, making Dona Luisa tremble and pour forth tears of joy mingled with fear over the glories and dangers of her son.  That Argensola certainly possessed the gift of affecting his hearers by the realism with which he told his stories!