"You've got to tell me!"
"You're crazy!"
"No matter, tell me, when?"
Insidiously she replied:
"Never. Or—when you bring me the necklace I asked you for!"
Struck dumb, he peered at her, because he realized the girl meant what she said. She added:
"Then——"
The door closed. Enrique Darlés blundered, weeping, down the staircase.
IV
DARLÉS got up next morning very early and went wandering out into the street. He was completely done up. The night had been one of terror and insomnia; and when day had dawned, finding him in his miserable little room—a room whose only furniture was a bureau covered with books and magazines, a rickety pine table and a few rush-bottomed chairs, all mean and old—the realization of his solitude had struck him with the violence of a blow. He had felt that profound agitation which psychologists call "claustrophobia," or the fear of enclosed spaces.