The succession of shocks she had just lived through; Mademoiselle's treachery; the loss of a cherished illusion; the suppression in her of any hope of leading a new life; worst of all, the effect of her decision to return to her former mode of living, had all been so many blows at her strength, physical and moral.
In her sufferings and vacillations, nothing had caused her so much torment as the thought of Monsalvat. Even worse than the certainty that her life was now definitely ruined, was the despair which took possession of her whenever she thought of this man.—She no longer doubted she loved him! His image, always present to her eyes, had assumed gigantic proportions in those moments when she was committing acts that were fatal to all her hopes. As she entered that house of evil it seemed to her that Monsalvat's spirit was waiting there on the stairs, trying to prevent her from passing. She had closed her eyes, and lowered her head, and she had walked straight through the shadowy figure that was trying to save her.... But, all the time she was there, he haunted her. The slightest noise made her think he was coming into the room. A voice in the corridor made her start for fear it was his voice. Once she had even thought she saw him pass by the open door....
Where was he now? she wondered. Why did he not look for her? Couldn't he guess how much she needed his protection? Without it she could not help but fall from depth to depth of degradation. Why had not Monsalvat appeared in that house of vice as she so desperately hoped, to rescue her? Why didn't he come now to free her from all this suffering?
Then she remembered that Monsalvat had told her, on the one occasion when they had talked together, that she ought to suffer—only so could she deserve pardon and pity. Those were his words.... She brooded over them. Nothing else gave any meaning to her miserable existence. She would welcome suffering then, and resign herself to grief! A little quieted, she went to sleep.
CHAPTER XII
September! Springtime! Buenos Aires with all the handsome trees of its avenues, its parks and open squares, and of its wide promenades along the river bank, was turning green as if by magic, offering to the delighted eye every conceivable shade of verdure. It was as though the hand of a great and invisible artist were retouching the somewhat faded picture Winter had turned over to him. He crushed under his swift brush the emerald of English lawns, spattered canary yellow on the shoots of young shrubs, with an impatient stroke of the knife scraped from the leaf fronds their velvety coverings of dull blue, burnt sienna and fawn, in order to freshen them up with aurora yellow, sepia, cobalt; poured out on the great parks all the chromes of his cosmic palate; rejuvenated the willows with ingenious splashes of those gamboge shades which remind one of fantastic tropical climes; and turned high noon into a glittering dream of gold. Oh, Springtime in Buenos Aires! Season of awakening grace and enchanting harmony, with nothing of the torpor of hot climates, the over-vivid colorings of the tropics, nor of the sluggishness of those lands where nature puts human energy to sleep through a long winter! Springtime in Buenos Aires! The air quivers with a dust of gold, which seems to float down from the brilliant sky, emanate from the trees, the flowers, and the grass, enveloping the buildings and transfiguring the human beings who pass through it. Springtime in Buenos Aires!
But for Monsalvat the spring was a season of sadness. To him the light and color and sounds of the reinvigorated city were meaningless. He noticed neither the satisfaction of the plants and grasses in the stir of life within them, nor the delight shining in the faces about him. He was alone in the Universe, a stranger to the world he lived in, for that world was now his enemy; a stranger also, through birth and station, to the world of those who are down-trodden, and oppressed. His mother dead, his sister lost, and that other woman in whom his new life had taken form, as yet unfound, he was alone. The friends of former times laughed at his ideas and ideals, said he had a new "pose," thought him crazy. What could he discuss with them except the trivial events of the social farce? They neither understood him nor wished to understand. He was utterly and irrevocably alone. If some one chanced to mention the beauty of the day, he answered—but to himself—"What is that to me?" What is there beyond our own sensations? Does even the material world exist save as our senses make us aware of it? And his sensations told him that there was nothing but sadness, grief, loneliness and gloom in all the human beings around him. The world was his own unhappy creation, the work of his agonized spirit. No, that Springtide was for him a time of bitterness.
All the while Nacha, with her somewhat ingenuous aspirations to a new kind of life was hiding at Mlle. Dupont's, Monsalvat had been searching for her. With Torres, he had sought her at Mme. Annette's toward the beginning of September, about a month before Nacha had gone there. He had been also to the house of Juanita Sanmartino, and the more recent disappointment of not finding Nacha there filled him with gloomy foreboding. Where was she? No one knew. Torres was certain she had not returned to her former means of livelihood; for in that case she would have appeared at one of these houses. It was Torres' theory that she was living with someone, perhaps some former friend, perhaps a recent chance acquaintance.
And Eugenia Monsalvat? No one could give him any clue to her whereabouts either. Had she changed her name? Was she dead? Or dragging out a wretched existence in the big city's underworld?