So Manuel said nothing, as he stood there stroking the round straw-colored head of little Melicent. The stranger waited, equally silent. There was no noise at all in the room until afar off a dog began to howl. "Yes, certainly," Dom Manuel said, "I might have known that my life was bound up with the life of Suskind, since my desire of her is the one desire which I have put aside unsatisfied. O rider of the white horse, you are very welcome." The other replied: "Why should you think that I know anything about this Suskind or that we of the Léshy keep any account of your doings? No matter what you may elect to think, however, it was decreed that the first person I found here should ride hence on my black horse. But you and the child stand abreast. So you must choose again, Dom Manuel, whether it be you or another who rides on my black horse." Then Manuel bent down, and he kissed little Melicent. "Go to your mother, dear, and tell her--" He paused here. He queerly moved his mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying to make it more supple. Says Melicent, "But what am I to tell her, Father?" "Oh, a very funny thing, my darling. You are to tell Mother that Father has always loved her over and above all else, and that she is always to remember that and--why, that in consequence she is to give you some ginger cakes," says Manuel, smiling. So the child ran happily away, without once looking back, and Manuel closed the door behind her, and he was now quite alone with his lean visitor. "Come," says the stranger, "so you have plucked up some heart after all! Yet it is of no avail to posture with me, who know you to be spurred to this by vanity rather than by devotion. Oh, very probably you are as fond of the child as is requisite, and of your other children too, but you must admit that after you have played with any one of them for a quarter of an hour you become most heartily tired of the small squirming pest." Manuel intently regarded him, and squinting Manuel smiled sleepily. "No; I love all my children with the customary paternal infatuation." "Also you must have your gesture by sending at the last a lying message to your wife, to comfort the poor soul against to-morrow and the day after. You are--magnanimously, you like to think,--according her this parting falsehood, half in contemptuous kindness and half in relief, because at last you are now getting rid of a complacent and muddle-headed fool of whom, also, you are most heartily tired." "No, no," says Manuel, still smiling; "to my partial eyes dear Niafer remains the most clever and beautiful of women, and my delight in her has not ever wavered. But wherever do you get these curious notions?" "Ah, I have been with so many husbands at the last, Count Manuel." And Manuel shrugged. "What fearful indiscretions you suggest! No, friend, that sort of thing has an ill sound, and they should have remembered that even at the last there is the bond of silence."