“What is it you have to tell me?” she asked him, withdrawing her hand.

“Well, I hardly know where to begin—­events have moved so swiftly, and such incredible things have happened.  Even now I am in a daze, for history is being made every hour—­history for Mexico, for you, and for me.  I bring you good news and bad news; something to startle you and set your brain in a whirl.  I planned to send a messenger ahead of me, and then I said:  ’No, this is a crisis; therefore no tongue but mine shall apprise her, no hand but mine shall comfort her.  Only a coward shrinks from the unpleasant; I shall lighten her distress and awaken in her breast new hope, new happiness’—­”

“What do you mean?” Alaire inquired, sharply.  “You say you bring bad news?”

The general nodded.  “In a way, terrible, shocking!  And yet I look beyond the immediate and see in it a blessing.  So must you.  To me it spells the promise of my unspoken longings, my whispered prayers.”  Noting his hearer’s growing bewilderment, he laid a hand familiarly upon her arm.  “No matter how I tell you, it will be a blow, for death is always sudden; it always finds us unprepared.”

“Death?  Who—­is dead?”

“Restrain yourself.  Allow for my clumsiness.”

“Who?  Please tell me?”

“Some one very close to you and very dear to you at one time.  My knowledge of your long unhappiness alone gives me courage to speak.”

Alaire raised her fluttering fingers to her throat; her eyes were wide as she said:  “You don’t mean—­Mr. Austin?”

“Yes.”  Longorio scrutinized her closely, as if to measure the effect of his disclosure.  “Senora, you are free!”

Alaire uttered a breathless exclamation; then, feeling his gaze burning into her, turned away, but not before he had noted her sudden pallor, the blanching of her lips.

This unexpected announcement dazed her; it scattered her thoughts and robbed her of words, but just what her dominant emotion was at the moment she could not tell.  Once her first giddiness had passed, however, once the truth had borne in upon her, she found that she felt no keen anguish, and certainly no impulse to weep.  Rather she experienced a vague horror, such as the death of an acquaintance or of a familiar relative might evoke.  Ed had been anything but a true husband, and her feeling now was more for the memory of the man he had been, for the boy she had known and loved, than for the man whose name she bore.  So he was gone and, as Longorio said, she was free.  It meant much.  She realized dimly that in this one moment her whole life had changed.  She had never thought of this way out of her embarrassments; she had been prepared, in fact, for anything except this.  Dead!  It was deplorable, for Ed was young.  Once the first shock had passed away, she became conscious of a deep pity for the man, and a complete forgiveness for the misery he had caused her.  After a time she faced the newsbearer, and in a strained voice inquired: