I lit a cigarette. All the while that it took me to smoke it he stood there in silence, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His impishness had dropped from him, exorcised, as it seemed, by Lucinda’s kiss. His face was calm and quiet. “Well, that’s finished!” he said at last, more to himself than to me. I did not speak; he looked down at me and addressed me more directly. “You saw her? You saw what she meant by that? It was—good-by!” “I’m afraid I think so too, old friend—especially in view of what she’d just been saying to me. She’s greatly distressed about it, but——” At that moment I myself was greatly distressed for him, indeed for both of them; but the next he spoilt my feeling (so to say) as far as he was concerned, and made Lucinda’s distress look overdone, or even gratuitous. He drew himself up pompously and spread his arms out on either side of him, holding his hands palms uppermost, rather as if he were expounding an argument to a public meeting. “Very well! I accept. Whatever her future feelings may be, I take her at her word, and accept—once and for all! It is not consonant with my dignity, my self-respect——” I sighed. He gave me a short, sharp look, but then went on in just the same fashion—“to prolong this situation, to persecute, to trouble. I will relieve her of my presence, of the thought of me. She is still young—almost a girl. She will find another life to live. She will find love again—though not the love I gave her. And if ever she thinks of Arsenio Valdez, let it be with charity and forgiveness!” It seemed rather cruel to recognize the fact,—but a fact it obstinately and obviously was—that Lucinda’s future thinking of him formed part of the program; relieving her of the thought of him was a mere flourish; whatever he proposed to do with himself, he did not propose to do that. “Time softens bitter memories, the mind dwells on what is sweet in the past. So may it be with her, when I am gone, Julius!” “Where do you propose to go?’” I asked irritably. His pomposity and sentimentality seemed to me transpontine. The man could not be sincere for five minutes; he was cutting a figure again. “Ah! that, my friend, need not be put in words. There is one course always open to a gentleman who has staked his all and lost.” It occurred to me that Arsenio had very often staked his all and lost, and that his course had been to borrow some more from other people. But what was the good of saying that to him when he was on his high horse—a very prancing steed? In a different mood, though, he would have laughed at the reminder himself. Of course I knew what he meant me to understand. But, frankly, I did not at the time believe a word of it; and now, as I lay thinking it over, I believed in it even less, if possible. I took it for another flourish, and smiled to myself at it, as Lucinda had laughed at the threat when she mentioned it to me on the Lido.