"What's the meaning of this?" asked Amiral.
"Oh, nothing!" Arnedo growled. "Show her the label on a bottle and she gets one of these fits."
Now completely succumbing to the champagne, her face distraught and her arms and body twitching in absurd gestures, Nacha began to talk in a rambling, incoherent jumble of words that moved the company to uncontrollable hilarity.
"I loved him so much, and he died!" she moaned. "He was here this afternoon, and he told me he loved me; and now he is dead. There never was another man like him—so good, so brave! No one else would have done what he did in the cabaret—Carlos Riga was his name. Oh, poor girl that I am! He told me I would suffer—that I must suffer—but I want to live—to live—I want to live and to suffer! He said he would be my friend. Why did he do that? And then go and die right afterwards? Everyone who loves me goes and dies! You're laughing at me! Why? Isn't it the truth? I may be all you say I am, but I know what love is, and I'm not going to leave this house...."
"She has a fine one on, has Nacha!"
"That's a shine for a cloudy day!"
But Nacha had lost consciousness of everything about her. Her eyes were heavy with sleep. She sagged forward in her chair, till her head rested on her arms, and, still at the table there, she fell fast asleep.
It was late the next day when she woke in bed; and the servant was bringing her a note from Arnedo. In it he explained that he did not care to have her remain a moment longer under his roof, that she was free to go to Monsalvat or to whomever she preferred. With the message he enclosed a hundred peso bill.
Nacha read the letter without emotion. Her first thought was one of shame at the spectacle she must have made the night before. As for Arnedo, she was glad to have her relations with him end in this fashion. A sudden and immediate break—yes, that was better! It was clear he was still fond of her, otherwise he would have told her to go himself, or have had the servant put her out. Consideration for her feelings to such an extent as the letter showed was an incredible act of delicacy on Pampa's part, had he been serious! She was tempted to remain, just to go him one better. But no! She was through with Pampa and his kind. Monsalvat had told her she was a good, a noble woman, at heart. Could she not be, if she tried? Try she would, at any rate.
She wrote a few words to her former lover, assuring him that she bore him no ill-will, and returning the hundred pesos. Then she quietly packed her belongings, dressed, had her trunk carried downstairs, and getting into a cab, gave the driver the address of a boarding house she had selected from a list in the Patria. "Strictly respectable," the advertisement had declared. Nacha felt quite elated now. To herself she seemed to have already gone a long way on the road to respectability.