He brooded heavily, with one eye on the past, and the other on the effect he was making. "In my nature," he informed me, "there is, mysteriously, some Castilian quality--no sooner had I arrived in Spain than I bore myself like a Spaniard. I spent fascinating months there, and when I came home, Paris appeared to me a foreign city. Absently I replied to people in Spanish; my fondest possession was a guitar that I had brought back. Though I could not play it, I derived exquisite pleasure from slinging it over my shoulder when I promenaded in the Garden of the Luxembourg. It may be that instinct warned my compatriots that now they were alien to me, for they seemed to avoid me, and I was alone." "I can understand it," I said. "One melancholy evening, as I wandered through the barren streets, pining for the magic of Granada, I noticed the name of 'Pilar Naranjo' on the bills of a minor musique 'all. Though it was a name unknown to me, its nationality was an appeal. I entered the musique 'all. I paid for a fauteuil, and received a pink ticket. What a crisis! Even to-day I cannot behold pink tickets without a shudder." To the strains of an exiguous orchestra, the provocation of the lady's castanets reached our ears gaily. Her victim writhed. * * * * * "Very soon I gathered that she was popular there; but on the stage, to be a foreigner is to be a favourite, and I prepared myself to be disappointed when she appeared. Sapristi! I was spellbound. She danced, that night, the _habenera_ that she is dancing now. Ah, those cajoling arms, so irresistible! How imperial was her form, how Southern were her feet! And her face! the bewildering beauty of her face that haunts me still." I got up. "Sit down--I could not endure your looking at her without me!" he gasped. "When her turn finished, I had no thought but her; I was scarcely conscious of the monkeys that came next. In some fifteen minutes a girl had danced herself into my destiny--and I was swept to the stage door, like a leaf, on the gale of my emotions. "I could see nobody inside, to take a message. Ten minutes--a quarter of an hour passed. I waited in the gloomy little cul-de-sac, dreading, in every second, to hear the approaching footstep of a rival with an appointment. So tremendous was my agitation that Spanish tenses with which I was normally familiar evaded me, and my brain buzzed with the effort to compose a preliminary phrase. "The door opened. Before her features were visible in the darkness, the majesty of her deportment proclaimed that it was she. I advanced. I bowed, with all my grace. "'Señorita,' I said, 'I am a poet, and I adore you. Will you honour me by supping with me?'