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Of course carrying a letter to Headquarters was not a very complicated matter; and as to that I would have trusted willingly a properly trained dog. My private letter to Doña Rita, the wonderful, the unique letter of farewell, I had given up for the present. Naturally I thought of the Ortega problem mainly in the terms of Doña Rita’s safety.
Not one!” and I saw Doña Rita’s complete loneliness beset by all sorts of insincerities, surrounded by pitfalls; her greatest dangers within herself, in her generosity, in her fears, in her courage, too. What I had to do first of all was to stop that wretch at all costs. I became aware of a great mistrust of Therese.
Under the gateway of the extremely ugly tenement house, which hides the Pavilion and the garden from the street, the wife of the porter was waiting with her arms akimbo. At once she cried out to Rita: ‘You were caught by our gentleman.’ “As a matter of fact, that old woman, being a friend of Rita’s aunt, allowed the girl to come into the garden whenever Allègre was away.
I felt positively friendly to it as if it had been Rita’s trusted personal attendant. I even went so far as to discover that it had a sort of grace of its own. But I never went so far as to address set speeches to it where it lurked shyly in its corner, or drag it out from there for contemplation. I left it in peace. I wasn’t mad. I was only convinced that I soon would be.
I lighted the gas, all the three jets in the middle of the room, the jet by the bedside and two others flanking the dressing-table. I had been struck by the wild hope of finding a trace of Rita’s passage, a sign or something. I pulled out all the drawers violently, thinking that perhaps she had hidden there a scrap of paper, a note. It was perfectly mad. Of course there was no chance of that.
I don’t know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Doña Rita’s peasant sister was very fascinating to me. If I went to live very willingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected with Doña Rita had for me a peculiar fascination. She had only passed through the house once as far as I knew; but it was enough. She was one of those beings that leave a trace.
I dragged myself upstairs to bed past the indefatigable statuette holding up the ever-miserable light. The black-and-white hall was like an ice-house. The main consideration which induced me to call on the Marquis of Villarel was the fact that after all I was a discovery of Doña Rita’s, her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been guaranteed by her and no one else.
It was as though he had borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of that visit. He still held Doña Rita’s hand, and, now and then, patted it. “It’s discouraging,” he cooed. “And I believe not one of you here is a Frenchman. I don’t know what you are all about. It’s beyond me.
I was not very surprised at the news of Doña Rita’s departure for Paris. It was not necessary to ask myself why she had gone. I didn’t even ask myself whether she had left the leased Villa on the Prado for ever.
The cigarette box, which she had taken up without removing her eyes from me, flew out of her hand and opening in mid-air scattered cigarettes for quite a surprising distance all over the room. I got up at once and wandered off picking them up industriously. Doña Rita’s voice behind me said indifferently: “Don’t trouble, I will ring for Rose.”
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