“Now, you see, you bad boy,” she went on, “those were my thoughts while I was away from you.  I had not thought it would be so difficult to enjoy myself without you.  It was impossible.  It is only three, but I could not stand it any longer.  I escaped before the cotillion.  If you only knew how hollow and stupid it all seemed to me!  How dull I thought the men’s conversation, how ludicrous the affectations of the women!  What are all these people compared to you!  No, I will never go out again without you.  Come, Wilhelm, and help me to undress.  I will not have Anne about me now—­nobody—­only you.”

Had she been drinking champagne at the ball?  Had the lights, the music, the dancing, the perfumes, her own verses gone to her head?  Whatever was the cause, her nerves were certainly very highly strung, and only calmed down when the morning was well advanced, and she had exhausted herself in a thousand fond extravagances.

During the next few days Wilhelm noticed something odd in Pilar’s manner which he failed to understand.  She seemed strangely absent and thoughtful, by turns unnaturally silent and feverishly talkative, would sit for hours beside him glancing mysteriously at him from time to time, as if she knew something very wonderful, and were debating in her own mind whether to tell it or keep it to herself.  She blushed if he looked at her inquiringly, and rushed away and locked herself into her boudoir.

He watched these peculiar proceedings patiently for about a week, and then asked one day, not without a secret misgiving: 

“Pilar, what is the matter with you lately?”

Probably she had only waited for this.  She cast herself upon his breast, drew his head down, and whispered something in his ear.  He straightened himself up with a jerk.

“Are you certain?” he asked, with an unsteady voice.

“Almost, I think; yes, Wilhelm, it must be so,” she stammered, hiding her face on his shoulder.

It was well she did not look at him at that moment.  Unskilled as he was in the art of dissembling, his face expressed no pleasure at all, but only painful surprise.  For weeks, but more especially since his gloomy broodings on New-Year’s night, the anxious thought lay heavy on him, “What if our connection should have results?” The situation would then become so complicated that he saw no prospect of ever putting it straight again.  The idea had only hitherto been an indefinite cause of anxiety—­now it resolved itself into a fact which appalled him.  At the same time he could not but see how happy Pilar was at the prospect, and it seemed to him unkind, even brutal, to let her have an inkling of what he felt at her news.  He kissed her in silence, and pressed her hand long and warmly.

“You have not said yet that you are glad,” she said, and raised her eyes to his in fond reproach.

“Must one put everything into words?” he returned, with an uneasy smile.