“Do not make fun of me, you sweet, bad creature; if I had had as much sense then as I have now, I should have loved you then as I love you now, and I would have belonged to you, even if it had cost me my father’s love.”  She gazed thoughtfully at the picture in which her innocent past confronted her in so angelic a form, and continued in tones of indescribable tenderness:  “Why did I not know you sooner?  Is it my fault that you who were made for me should live so far away and wait so long before you came to me?  How I should have rejoiced to be able to offer you the pure young creature of this picture!  But I can but give you all I have—­my first real love, the virginity of my heart—­surely that is something?”

Her hazel eyes pleaded for a great deal of compassion, and her full scarlet lips for a great deal of love, and only a heart of cast iron could have refused her either.

Beyond the salon was a roomy dining-room, hung with magnificent Cordova leather, and from this a glass door led into a pretty little garden with an arbor in the corner, and some old trees.  High, ivy-clad walls inclosed the square green spot of nature.  Up the stairs, on the walls of which hung many valuable pictures, for which there was no place in the rooms, Pilar and Wilhelm mounted to the second floor.  They entered first a red salon with windows opening on to the balcony and in which the all-pervading scent of ylang-ylang betrayed that it was the favorite apartment of the lady of the house.  She did not keep Wilhelm long in this dainty bower, but drew him into the large bedroom adjoining.  The walls were draped with Japanese silk, patterned with strange landscapes, fabulous flowers, gay-colored birds on the wing, and a network of twining creatures, and drawn together at the ceiling like the roof of a tent.  Out of the soft folds of the center rosette hung a lamp with golden dragons on its pink globe.  There was a wardrobe with looking-glass doors, a toilette table, an immense bed of carved ebony inlaid with scenes from the antique in ivory, and chairs covered with Persian stuffs.  Beside all this there was an old oak Gothic priedieu, a small altar draped in rose color and white lace, a mass of flowers, and numerous crucifixes and Madonnas of various sizes in silver, ivory and alabaster.

“Are you so devout?  That is news to me,” exclaimed Wilhelm, surprised.  He little knew that the first thing Pilar had done on entering the house was to hasten to her bedroom, kiss the holy silver Madonna del Pilar with deepest devotion, and kneel for a few moments on her priedieu.

“Oh, no, I am not at all devout.  I am just the pagan you have always known.  But—­que voulez-vouz?—­one has old habits.  I regard the Blessed Virgin chiefly in the light of Our Lady of Sorrows, whose heart is pierced with seven swords, and Christ as the eternal type of sublimest love.  You are a heretic, but I know that pictures and symbols are not as offensive to you as to certain vulgar free-thinkers.”