V
Letitia and her husband were in the Opera house at Buenos Ayres. The operetta of the evening was as shallow as a puddle left by the rain in the pampas.
In the box next to theirs sat a young man, and Letitia yielded now and then to the temptation of observing his glances of admiration. Suddenly she felt her arm roughly grasped. It was Stephen who commanded her silently to follow him.
In the dim corridor he brought his bluish-white face close to her ear, and hissed: “If you look at that fool once more, I’ll plunge my dagger into your heart. I give you this warning. In this country one doesn’t shilly-shally.”
They returned to their box. Stephen smiled with a smile as glittering as a torero’s, and put a piece of chocolate into his mouth. Letitia looked at him sidewise, and wondered whether he really had a dagger in his possession.
That night, when they drove home, he almost smothered her with his caresses. She repulsed him gently, and begged: “Show me the dagger, Stephen. Give it to me! I want so much to see it.”
“What dagger, silly child?” he asked, in astonishment.
“The dagger you were going to plunge into my heart.”
“Let that be,” he answered, in hollow tones. “This is no time to speak of daggers and death.”
But Letitia was stubborn. She insisted that she wanted to see it. He took his hands from her, and fell into sombre silence.
The incident taught Letitia that she could play with him. She no longer feared that sombre stillness of his, nor his great skull on his powerful neck, nor the thin mouth, nor the paling face, nor the great strength of his extraordinary small hands. She knew that she could play with him.
Great fire-flies flew through the air, and settled in the grass about them. When the carriage stopped at the villa, Letitia looked around with a cry of delight. Sparks seemed to be falling in a golden rain. The gleaming insects whirred about the windows, the roof, the flowery creepers on the walls. They penetrated into the hall.
Letitia stopped at the dark foot of the stairs, looked at the phosphorescent glimmer, and asked fearfully and with an almost imperceptible self-mockery in her deep voice: “Tell me, Stephen, couldn’t they set the house on fire?”
The Negro Scipio, who appeared with a lamp at the door, heard her words and grinned.