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It was their Sergeant Finney who whacked a Filipino major with the butt of his Springfield, and tumbled out of him the batch of reports and records that gave the numbers and positions of every unit of Pilar's division on the southward zone.
He felt as if a few steps would bring him again to Pilar's side, and more than once the desire came over him to return to her, and lay himself at her feet, there to vegetate luxuriously henceforth, without a will or thought, to the end.
But what will poor Pilar's feelings be when she comes home and finds him gone? At the picture he faltered, and very near returned to bed. But no he put it forcibly from him. He rapidly finished dressing, and went into his room to collect such things as were absolutely necessary. The two large trunks had been removed, and would in any case have been out of the question at this juncture.
"Heaven vouchsafes me an idea, my children. I will make your punishment here so bitter that Almighty God in His mercy will give you but a few years of purgatory after death. Come with me." He turned and led the way slowly to the rear of the mission buildings. Andreo shuddered for the first time, and tightened his arm about Pilar's shaking body. He knew that they were to be locked in the dungeons.
Their grace, too, the dancing about which they made such a stir, not to compare it with La Clavel's but with no better than Pilar's was hardly more than a rapid clumsy posturing. Where was the young man now who could dance for two hours without stopping on a spot scarcely bigger than the rim of his silk hat? Where, indeed, was the silk hat!
He disclosed Pilar's passion and his own weakness, the pagan sensuality and the artifices of the woman's insatiable love, and the unworthy part he had played in her house before the servants and strangers. He spoke of his tormenting doubts as to the justice of his actions, and concluded: "And now, tell me, shall I answer this letter?"
What he was most distinctly conscious of was a sense of profound disgust at his present manner of life. Things could not remain as they were. Sooner or later it must inevitably come to the knowledge of his friends. What would they think of him for leading such a life at Pilar's side, in her house? She had children who would some day sit in judgment upon her conduct and his.
As long as he might not live in Berlin, what did it matter where he lived? and Paris was as good a place as any other. To have resisted Pilar's persuasions would not have been an evidence of strength, but simply the obstinacy of a conceited fool, who wants to prove to himself that he is capable of setting somebody else at defiance.
He knew that Pilar's was the stronger spirit of the two, that she had a great influence over her mother, and could induce her to adopt any opinion or feelings she might choose. What if the marquise ranged herself on her daughter's side?
As he passed Pilar's window and saw a pair of wistful black eyes behind the grating, his heart took fire. No one was within sight. By a series of signs he made his lady understand that he would place a note beneath a certain adobe in the wall. Pilar, as she went to and fro under the fruit trees in the garden, or sat on the long corridor weaving baskets, watched that adobe with fascinated eyes.
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