He wrote painfully on the paper which they gave him.

“There,” he said, when he had done.  “And now I will compose myself.”

Buscarlet saw O’Neill forth of the door, for he was to leave for Spain in the morning.  On the threshold he tapped O’Neill on the arm.

“It is worth a hundred thousand francs,” he whispered, with startled eyes.  “And besides, what a souvenir!”

The little room in which they bade O’Neill wait for the Senora opened upon the patio of the house, where a sword of vivid sunlight sliced across the shadows on the warm brick flooring, and a little industrious fountain dribbled through a veil of ferns.  There was a shrine in the room; its elaboration of gilt and rosy wax faced the open door, and from a window beside it one could see, below the abrupt hill of Ronda, the panorama of the sun-steeped countryside.

The cool of the room was grateful to O’Neill after the heat of the road.  He set his hat on the small table and took a seat, marking the utter stillness that reigned in that great Moorish house.  Save for the purr of the fountain no sounds reached him in all that nest of cool chambers.  The thought of it awoke in him new speculation as to the woman he had come to see, who had buried the ashes of her fiery youth in this serene retreat.  He had thought about her with growing curiosity throughout the journey from Paris, endeavoring to reduce to terms of his own understanding the spirit that had flamed and faded and guttered out in such a manner.  The shrine at his elbow recalled to him that she was “religious.”  It explained nothing.

He was staring at it in perplexity, when the doorway darkened, and he was conscious that he was not alone.  He started to his feet and bowed confusedly to the woman on the threshold.

“Mr. O’Neill?” she inquired.  Her pronunciation had the faultless precision of the English-speaking Spaniard.  He bowed again, and drew out a chair for her.

It seemed that she hesitated a moment ere she came forward and accepted it.  When she stood in the door, with the slanting sun at her back, O’Neill could see little of her save the trim outline of her figure, wrought to plain severity by the relentless black dress she wore.  Now, when she was seated, he regarded her with all an artist’s quick curiosity.  As Regnault had said, she was not much less than fifty years old, but they were years that had trodden lightly.  There was nothing of age in the strong brows and the tempestuous eyes that were dark under them; the mouth was yet full and impetuous.  Some discipline seemed to have laid a constraint on her; there was a somber seriousness in her regard; but O’Neill recognized without difficulty the proud, hardy, unquelled countenance that stared from the canvas in Regnault’s studio.

She had his visiting-card in her fingers.  Lest he should be denied admittance he had penciled on it, below his name, “with a message from M. Regnault, who is very ill.”