“Something! What thing? What are the things that fall by themselves? Who is that man of whom you spoke? Is there a man?”
“No doubt about it whatever. I brought him here myself.”
“What for?”
“Why shouldn’t I have a Jacobin of my own? Haven’t you one, too? But mine is a different problem from that white-haired humbug of yours. He is a genuine article. There must be plenty like him about. He has scores to settle with half a dozen people, he says, and he clamours for revolutions to give him a chance.”
“But why did you bring him here?”
“I don’t know—from sudden affection . . . ”
All this passed in such low tones that we seemed to make out the words more by watching each other’s lips than through our sense of hearing. Man is a strange animal. I didn’t care what I said. All I wanted was to keep her in her pose, excited and still, sitting up with her hair loose, softly glowing, the dark brown fur making a wonderful contrast with the white lace on her breast. All I was thinking of was that she was adorable and too lovely for words! I cared for nothing but that sublimely aesthetic impression. It summed up all life, all joy, all poetry! It had a divine strain. I am certain that I was not in my right mind. I suppose I was not quite sane. I am convinced that at that moment of the four people in the house it was Doña Rita who upon the whole was the most sane. She observed my face and I am sure she read there something of my inward exaltation. She knew what to do. In the softest possible tone and hardly above her breath she commanded: “George, come to yourself.”
Her gentleness had the effect of evening light. I was soothed. Her confidence in her own power touched me profoundly. I suppose my love was too great for madness to get hold of me. I can’t say that I passed to a complete calm, but I became slightly ashamed of myself. I whispered:
“No, it was not from affection, it was for the love of you that I brought him here. That imbecile H. was going to send him to Tolosa.”
“That Jacobin!” Doña Rita was immensely surprised, as she might well have been. Then resigned to the incomprehensible: “Yes,” she breathed out, “what did you do with him?”