A despairing pity and a sense of hopeless loss weighed upon my spirit with such heaviness as I had never known. Not only had I lost the girl I loved, but there was no such girl; she was a dream, and I had waked up. That was all; but it seemed the end of everything.
My errand in Spain was finished, or rather broken short. She did not want me any more. The sooner I took myself out of her life and let her forget what must now seem childish folly, the better. I might have known—she was so young; and she had warned me of disaster when she said, “Don't leave me alone.”
[pg 229] I went to Olivero's flat and changed my clothes; then to the hotel where Ropes and the car were waiting. For the first time since we had come into Spain, I drove, “like a demon,” Ropes' surprised face said, though his tongue was discreet; and the wild rush through the air was wine to thirsty lips.
At the Cortijo de Santa Rufina they were all sitting in the patio in floods of moonlight, the great awning which gave shade by day, fully rolled back.
“You see,” exclaimed Pilar, “we sat up for you. Well, how did it go off?”
I heard myself laughing. It did not feel a pleasant laugh, but I was glad to think that it sounded like any other. “Oh, it went off exactly as I might have expected,” I said, knowing that it was useless to hide my humiliation, though I might hide my misery. “And consequently, my car and I will also go off, to-morrow. As for Dick, he must do as he pleases; but I advise him, now he's here, to stay for the Semana Santa.”
“What do you mean?” asked Pilar, almost letting fall the guitar on which she had been playing. “Has—has Lady Monica promised to go with you—to-morrow?”
“Not at all,” said I. “But what she's promised to another man makes it better that I should go. She's engaged to Carmona.”
“I don't believe it,” cried Pilar.
“I shouldn't, if anyone but herself had told me.”