“No-no? Well, it was nice of her. No matter. I will tell you. I was his mistress.”
She spoke without bravado, but quite without shame, seeming to glory in the statement.
“I met him in Paris,” she continued, half closing her eyes. “I was staying at the house of my sister, and my sister, you understand, was married to Juan’s cousin. That is how we met. I was married. Yes, it is true. But in France our parents find our husbands and our lovers find our hearts. Yet sometimes these marriages are happy. To me this good thing had not happened, and in the moment when Juan’s hand touched mine a living fire entered into my heart and it has been burning ever since; burning-burning, always till I die.
“Very well, I am a shameless woman, yes. But I have lived, and I have loved, and I am content. I went with him to Cuba, and from Cuba to another island where he had estates, and the name of which I shall not pronounce, because it hurts me so, even yet. There he set eyes upon Ysola de Valera, the daughter of his manager, and, pouf!”
She shrugged and snapped her fingers.
“He was like that, you understand? I knew it well. They did not call him Devil Menendez for nothing. There was a scene, a dreadful scene, and after that another, and yet a third. I have pride. If I had seemed to forget it, still it was there. I left him, and went back to France. I tried to forget. I entered upon works of charity for the soldiers at a time when others were becoming tired. I spent a great part of my fortune upon establishing a hospital, and this child”—she threw her arm around Val Beverley—“worked with me night and day. I think I wanted to die. Often I tried to die. Did I not, dear?”
“You did, Madame,” said the girl in a very low voice.
“Twice I was arrested in the French lines, where I had crept dressed like a poilu, from where I shot down many a Prussian. Is it not so?”
“It is true,” answered the girl, nodding her head.
“They caught me and arrested me,” said Madame, with a sort of triumph. “If it had been the British”—she raised her hand in that Bernhardt gesture—“with me it would have gone hard. But in France a woman’s smile goes farther than in England. I had had my fun. They called me ‘good comrade!’ Perhaps I paid with a kiss. What does it matter? But they heard of me, those Prussian dogs. They knew and could not forgive. How often did they come over to bomb us, Val, dear?”