Next day, Teodora had informed her that Darlés had come to see her while she had been out. Day after day, the same thing had occurred. The girl had ended up by feeling very much annoyed at the young fellow's sad obstinacy. A veritable beggar for love, he had come to trouble the easy currents of her idleness. Every time Teodora had told her the student had been back again, Alicia had grown angry.
"What the devil does he want, anyhow?" she would exclaim. "Blest if I know!"
In this she was really sincere. She did not know. The selfish frivolity of her disposition could not understand how any man, after having received the supreme gift from a woman, could do other than get tired of her. Darlés' note, complaining of her desertion of him, increased her annoyance. Once for all she felt she must cut this entanglement. What better way could there be than to receive the importunate young fellow and talk to him in a perfectly impersonal way, as if no secret existed between them?
When Darlés arrived, next day, at the usual time, Teodora led him into the dining-room.
"I'll tell mistress you're here," said she.
Darlés remained standing there, reflective, one elbow leaning against the window-jamb. Once, when he had been nothing but "Don Manuel's friend," Alicia had used to receive him informally. Nobody had announced him, then. Now he felt himself isolated, stifled by that kind of friendly hostility used on boresome callers. The maid came back and said:
"Mistress will see you. Come this way."
Darlés found the girl in her little boudoir, together with a tall, dark-haired girl, dressed in gray. This girl wore English-looking, mannish clothes, well set off by her red tie and by the whiteness of her starched collar and cuffs. When Alicia saw the student, she neither moved nor stretched out her hand to him. All she said was:
"Hello, there! Is that you?"
Something in the rather scornful familiarity of her greeting infinitely humbled him. He grew pale. All the blood in his body seemed flooding his heart, turning to ice there. Still discourteous, Alicia introduced him to the other girl: