Castro laughed with affectionate compassion as he looked at his friend.
"Let me say it again, you are satiated; you have the lack of appetite and the gloomy vision of a person suffering from a painful indigestion. You are still too young for this debility to last. You will recover. Your appetite will come back. I hope you won't find the table set exactly as in the past, that you will be swept off your feet by some obstacle, in other words, that unrequital will make you suffer; and then ... well, just wait till then!"
CHAPTER V
DON MARCOS had never seen the Prince so vexed as he was that morning, when he announced that the Duchess de Delille was waiting for him down-stairs in the hall.
"You should have told her I'd gone out; any sort of a pretext—a lunch at Nice.... There must be some understanding between you. You certainly look out for your Infanta!"
The Colonel, flushed with emotion, made an effort to reply to these accusations. If the Duchess had now suddenly presented herself, it was perhaps because he had refused to take any of her messages for the Prince.
As the latter went down to the hall, he ran straight into Alicia, who was standing close to a window, and looking at the gardens and the sea. Her back was towards him, just as he had seen her coming out of the concert. When she turned her head, Michael thought to himself that he would surely never have recognized her had he met her anywhere else. She was a beautiful woman, but scarcely like the person he had seen that last time in the "study" on the Avenue du Bois, with its weird oriental nick-nacks and unwholesome perfumes. Several years of her life had passed away since then, and yet she seemed fresher, and younger. Her eyes had lost the veiled disturbing fire, that made them look larger, and gave them a fixed, unnatural stare. The dull, sickly whiteness of her skin had taken on color from the sun and the open air. Her airy, undulating litheness had become less willowy, giving her person the calm tranquillity of bodies that are beginning to crystallize in their definitive form.
The Prince, interrupted by Alicia's smiling glance, was unable to continue his scrutiny. It seemed from her quiet easy manner as though she had been there in that very place only the day before. Moreover, Michael suddenly began to wonder how he should start the conversation. Should he talk English or French? Should he speak informally as before?... She put an end to his hesitation, speaking familiarly in Spanish, just as when they were children.
"How hard it is to get in touch with you! Practically impossible," Alicia said as she sat down, after shaking hands with him. "So I decided to pay you this visit. It isn't exactly proper for a lady to call on a person with such a terrible reputation as you have; but I'm not the first one who has come here. There have been lots of others!"
She laughed teasingly as she said this. Immediately she became serious, and said timidly: