I looked at Mrs. Saltillo, who had reinforced her eyes with her old piquant pince-nez, but could detect no irony in them.  She was prettily imperturbable, that was all.  There was an awkward silence.  Then it was broken by a bounding step on the stairs, a wide-open fling of the door, and Enriquez pirouetted into the room:  Enriquez, as of old, unchanged from the crown of his smooth, coal-black hair to the tips of his small, narrow Arabian feet; Enriquez, with his thin, curling mustache, his dancing eyes set in his immovable face, just as I had always known him!

He affected to lapse against the door for a minute, as if staggered by a resplendent vision.  Then he said:—­

“What do I regard?  Is it a dream, or have I again got them—­thees jimjams?  My best friend and my best—­I mean my only—­wife!  Embrace me!”

He gave me an enthusiastic embrace and a wink like sheet-lightning, passed quickly to his wife, before whom he dropped on one knee, raised the toe of her slipper to his lips, and then sank on the sofa in simulated collapse, murmuring, “Thees is too mooch of white stone for one day!”

Through all this I saw his wife regarding him with exactly the same critically amused expression with which she had looked upon him in the days of their strange courtship.  She evidently had not tired of his extravagance, and yet I feel as puzzled by her manner as then.  She rose and said:  “I suppose you have a good deal to say to each other, and I will leave you by yourselves.”  Turning to her husband, she added, “I have already spoken about the Aztec manuscript.”

The word brought Enriquez to his feet again.  “Ah!  The little old nigger—­you have read?” I began to understand.  “My wife, my best friend, and the little old nigger, all in one day.  Eet is perfect!” Nevertheless, in spite of this ecstatic and overpowering combination, he hurried to take his wife’s hand; kissing it, he led her to a door opening into another room, made her a low bow to the ground as she passed out, and then rejoined me.

“So these are the little old niggers you spoke of in your note,” I said, pointing to the manuscript.  “Deuce take me if I understood you!”

“Ah, my leetle brother, it is you who have changed!” said Enriquez dolorously.  “Is it that you no more understand American, or have the ‘big head’ of the editor?  Regard me!  Of these Aztecs my wife have made study.  She have pursued the little nigger to his cave, his grotto, where he is dead a thousand year.  I have myself assist, though I like it not, because thees mummy, look you, Pancho, is not lively.  And the mummy who is not dead, believe me! even the young lady mummy, you shall not take to your heart.  But my wife”—­he stopped, and kissed his hand toward the door whence she had flitted—­“ah, she is wonderful!  She has made the story of them, the peecture of them, from the life and on the instant!  You shall take them, my leetle brother, for your journal; you shall