“I am really here,” I said. “Would you like to touch my hand?” She didn’t move at all; her fingers still clutched the fur coat. “What has happened?” “It’s a long story, but you may take it from me that all is over. The tie between us is broken. I don’t know that it was ever very close. It was an external thing. The true misfortune is that I have ever seen you.” This last phrase was provoked by an exclamation of sympathy on her part. She raised herself on her elbow and looked at me intently. “All over,” she murmured. “Yes, we had to wreck the little vessel. It was awful. I feel like a murderer. But she had to be killed.” “Why?” “Because I loved her too much. Don’t you know that love and death go very close together?” “I could feel almost happy that it is all over, if you hadn’t had to lose your love. Oh, _amigo_ George, it was a safe love for you.” “Yes,” I said. “It was a faithful little vessel. She would have saved us all from any plain danger. But this was a betrayal. It was—never mind. All that’s past. The question is what will the next one be.” “Why should it be that?” “I don’t know. Life seems but a series of betrayals. There are so many kinds of them. This was a betrayed plan, but one can betray confidence, and hope and—desire, and the most sacred . . .” “But what are you doing here?” she interrupted. “Oh, yes! The eternal why. Till a few hours ago I didn’t know what I was here for. And what are you here for?” I asked point blank and with a bitterness she disregarded. She even answered my question quite readily with many words out of which I could make very little. I only learned that for at least five mixed reasons, none of which impressed me profoundly, Doña Rita had started at a moment’s notice from Paris with nothing but a dressing-bag, and permitting Rose to go and visit her aged parents for two days, and then follow her mistress. That girl of late had looked so perturbed and worried that the sensitive Rita, fearing that she was tired of her place, proposed to settle a sum of money on her which would have enabled her to devote herself entirely to her aged parents. And did I know what that extraordinary girl said? She had said: “Don’t let Madame think that I would be too proud to accept anything whatever from her; but I can’t even dream of leaving Madame. I believe Madame has no friends. Not one.” So instead of a large sum of money Doña Rita gave the girl a kiss and as she had been worried by several people who wanted her to go to Tolosa she bolted down this way just to get clear of all those busybodies. “Hide from them,” she went on with ardour. “Yes, I came here to hide,” she repeated twice as if delighted at last to have hit on that reason among so many others. “How could I tell that you would be here?” Then with sudden fire which only added to the delight with which I had been watching the play of her physiognomy she added: “Why did you come into this room?”