“But that’s just as vulgar,” I protested, rather weakly. I was a little carried away by Arsenio’s eloquence; it was at least a point of view which I had not sufficiently considered.
“Not from him! It would be giving what he loves best!” He laughed in a bitter triumph, then suddenly flung himself down into his chair again. “I had ten louis left—five of hers, five of his. With hers I bought the ticket; on his I starved till the draw came. Am I not revenged on the woman who would humiliate my wife, on the man who would buy the honor of Donna Lucinda Valdez?”
“It’s about the oddest kind of revenge I ever heard of,” was all I found to say. “You’ll complete it, I suppose, by dazzling Godfrey, when he arrives, with the spectacle of Luanda’s virtuous splendor? Or is he to find her still selling needlework on the Piazza?”
He leant across the little table and laid his hand on my arm. I imagined that it must be the table at which Lucinda had once sat, mending her gloves—most skillfully no doubt, for had she not proved herself a fine needlewoman?
“You too are against me?” he asked in a low voice. “Bitterly against me, Julius?”
“Once you took her—yes, here. Then you forsook her. Then you took her again. And you’ve dragged her in the dirt.”
“But now I can——!”
“That to her would be dirt too,” I said. “I suppose she won’t touch that money? That’s why she’s still peddling her wares on the Piazza?”
He made a despairing gesture of assent with his hands—despairing, uncomprehending. Then he raised his head and said proudly, “But if she doesn’t yet understand, I shall make her!” Then, with a sudden change of manner, he added, “And you’ll move into the floor below to-morrow? That’s capital! You might ask us both to dinner—give a housewarming! Louis will look after your marketing and cooking.”