Her dark eyes, suddenly splendid, flashed at him with strong anger.  The whole woman was transformed; she sat up in her chair, and her breast swelled.  O’Neill saw before him the Lola of twenty years before.

He held up one hand to stay her.

“I should be his friend, as you say,” he told her.  “But he knows that it is not so.  I came for two reasons:  because now is not the time to be discriminating in my service to him, and also because I am glad to help him to do right.  I will take back what answer you please, Senora, for I came here with no great hopes; but still I am glad I came, for the second reason.”

“Help him to do right!” She repeated the words in a manner of perplexity.  “What is it you mean to do right?”

O’Neill had a moment’s clear insight into the aspects of his task which made him unfit for it.  “Eight” was a term that puzzled his auditor.

“Senora,” he answered gravely, “his passions are burned out.  He is too sick a man to do evil.  It is late, no doubt, and very late; but his mood is not to die as he has lived.  He asks, not for those who would come at a word, but for his wife.  And I am glad to be the bearer of that message even if I carry back a curse for an answer.”

It was not in O’Neill to know how well and deftly Regnault had chosen his messenger.  His lean, brown face and his earnestness were having their effect.

The Senora bent her keen gaze on him again.

“Ah,” she cried, with a sort of bitterness, “he regrets, eh?  He repents?” She laughed shortly.

“I do not think so,” answered O’Neill.

“No?” She considered him anew.  “Tell me,”—­she leaned forward in a sudden eagerness—­“why does he ask for me?  If he is sober and composed for death, why—­why does he ask for me?”

O’Neill made a gesture of helplessness.  “Senora,” he said, “you should know; you have the key to him.”

Gone was all the discipline to which her nature had deferred.  Twenty years of quiet and atonement were stripped from her like a flimsy garment.  The fire was alight in all her vivid face again as she brooded upon his answer.

“Ah!” she cried of a sudden.  “Everything is stale for a stale soul.  Does he count on that?  Senor, you speak well; you have made me a picture of him.  He has heard that I have made religion the pillow of my conscience, eh?  He folds his hands, eh?—­thin, waxen hands, clasping in piety upon his counterpane, eh?  He will wear the air of a thin saint and bless me in a beautiful voice?  Am I right?  Am I right?”

She forced her questions into his face, leaning forward in a quick violence.

“Goodness knows!” said O’Neill.  “I shouldn’t wonder.”

She nodded at him with tight lips.  “I know,” she said.  “I know.  I have him by heart.”  She rose from her seat and stood thinking.  Suddenly she laughed, and strode to the middle of the room.  Her gait had the impatience and lightness of a dancer’s.  Quickly she wheeled and faced O’Neill, laughing again.