She shivered, and her own cheeks turned very pale. Her lips were faintly twisted as if in an effort to smile.
“My friend—if you insist,” she consented.
“It is the purpose for which I came,” he announced.
For a long moment each looked into the other's eyes with a singular intentness that nothing here would seem to warrant.
At length she spoke.
“Come,” she said, “you shall tell me.”
And she waved him to a chair set in the embrasure of the mullioned window that looked out over a tract of meadowland sweeping gently down to the river.
Don Antonio sank into the chair, placing his hat and whip upon the floor beside him. The Marquise faced him, occupying the padded window-seat, her back to the light, her countenance in shadow.
And here, in his own words, follows the story that he told her as she herself set it down soon after. Whilst more elaborate and intimate in parts, it yet so closely agrees throughout with his own famous “Relacion,” that I do not hesitate to accept the assurance she has left us that every word he uttered was burnt as if by an acid upon her memory.
THE STORY OF ANTONIO PEREZ