Monsalvat did not see her when she returned from work. He had gone directly from his office to see Torres. The doctor had just come in from his calls.
"I told you so," Torres asserted, after Monsalvat had related his conversation with Nacha. "No good can come of dealing with such women. You have got nothing out of it but disillusionment and bitterness: you've lost almost a year of your life—and that isn't all! Your reputation is quite done for, my boy. You'll have a job of it, to rehabilitate yourself socially!"
Monsalvat listened, wondering how this friend, the only one now left him, could know him so little. He had come to confide his trouble to the only human being of his own class who would consent to listen to him: and he had been misunderstood! It seemed useless to explain. Abruptly, without shaking hands with Torres, he went away, downcast and ill. Why hope for anything from anyone? Life weighed too heavy on him; he had no illusions, no hopes; and then it was that he knew what the frigid abysses of solitude are really like! Abysses into which everything falls away, and vanishes, and nothing, not even feeling remains....
Not caring to go home he wandered about the streets. At dinner time he went into a coffee house and drank a little coffee. Then he continued his aimless walk for several hours, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, or of the passing of time. At last he went back to his room and tried to read, but with no success. Finally he wrote Nacha a long letter, in which he tried to convince her that she loved him; strove to communicate his own feeling to her, painted the serene and happy days awaiting them if only Nacha would accept the love stretching out its imploring hands towards her!
An hour passed, two hours, three hours. Monsalvat wrote for a time, then broke off, then resumed writing. He would get up, pace to and fro, sit down again. It was now two o'clock. Everything was silent; the house, and the street outside.
But suddenly the silence was broken. He heard a noise like that of an automobile stopping near by. Then a door opened, and there was a subdued sound of footsteps in the courtyard. Monsalvat leaned out of his window, which opened on the street; but he could distinguish nothing. Then he went out to the narrow hallway which led to his room. From there he could not see the lower hall; so he went downstairs. There was no one to be seen in the patio, and everything was silent once more. Only in Mauli's room, almost directly facing Nacha's, was there a light. It must have been he coming home, Monsalvat concluded; and he returned to his room. Then he lay down, and quite exhausted, fell into a heavy sleep.
A few minutes later, however, a strange noise aroused him. He thought it must have been a scream; not a sharp cry, but muffled, stifled, as though coming from a distance. Then, as his brain cleared a little, he decided it had been from close at hand—from the street, from the front door, perhaps. He heard men's voices, the noise of footsteps, and an automobile approaching. Jumping up from his bed, he leaned out from the window.
He must have uttered a frantic cry; for what he saw was as distinct and horrible and swift as the visions in a dream.... Four men came out from under the archway of the front door. They were carrying something, a dark huddled form that moved; and now they were thrusting it into the automobile drawn up at the curb. A woman!