"And now," she said, "what do you mean to do with me?"
Ballester went to his bureau, wrote on a sheet of paper and brought the paper to Olivia.
"You can show this at the railway-station to-morrow," he said, and he laid the permit on the table and turned away.
Women are not reasonable people. For the second time that night Olivia forced me to contemplate that trite reflection. For now that she had got what she had suffered hunger and indignities to get, she merely played with it with the tips of her fingers, looking now upon the table, now at Juan Ballester's back, and now upon the table again.
"And you?" she said gently. "What will become of you?"
I suppose Ballester was the only one in the room who did not notice the softness of her voice. To me it was extraordinary. He had tortured her with hunger, exposed her to the gentle methods of his police, yet the fact that he did these things because he wanted her seemed to make him suddenly valuable to her now that she was free of him.
Ballester turned round and leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
"I?" he said. "I shall just stay on alone here until some day someone gets stronger than I am, perhaps, and puts me up against the wall outside----"
"Oh, no!" cried Olivia, interrupting him.
"Well, one never knows," said his Excellency, shrugging his shoulders. He turned to the window and drew aside the curtains. The morning had come. It was broad daylight outside.