“TWELVE years since I was in Paris! Ay!... How I have changed!”

As he spoke, Robledo looked pityingly at himself in the glass; he looked pityingly at himself every morning while he dressed!

He was still in vigorous health; but unquestionably age had begun to leave its marks on him. The crown of his head was now completely bald. On the other hand he had shaved off his mustache, for the simple reason that it had come to contain more white hairs than brown ones. This change, according to Robledo, made him look like a priest or a comic actor. But it was undeniable that it had restored to his appearance a certain jovial youthfulness.

He was sitting in a wicker chair in the lobby of one of the hotels that are to be found in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe. Opposite him sat a young married couple, no other than Watson and Celinda.

The years that had passed had merely emphasized Richard’s features, bringing into sharper relief his athletic and tranquil beauty. Flor de Rio Negro had now attained the ripe sweetness of a midsummer fruit. She still preserved her youthful slimness, slightly modified; she was now the mother of four children!

She no longer wore her hair cut in the style of a medieval page, nor, in public, did she indulge in the childish exploits of the small amazon who had once been the admiration of the immigrants on the wild Patagonian plains. The time had come when she considered it her duty to assume something at least of the grave dignity to be expected in the mother of a nine year old boy. This important member of the family now sat facing his parents. His restlessness, and his impatience of maternal remonstrances soon revealed the fact that he was a self-willed and somewhat disobedient small boy; and he had already learned to seek “Uncle Manuel’s” protection whenever his less understanding parents scolded him. Meanwhile, on an upper floor of the “palace,” as most such hotels call themselves, two English nurses were occupied in watching over the play of the prosperous couple’s three younger children.

The Watsons had the characteristic appearance of those South American families who go to spend several months in Europe every year or so, and who, rich and exuberant, travel tribe-fashion, transporting their whole establishments, including all the servants, from one side of the Atlantic to the other. The Watson family was as yet but barely started, and occupied merely four staterooms on board ship, and five rooms with a general sitting room at the various hotels at which they stopped. But ten years more, with continued success in business, on its yearly trips to Europe, the family caravan would be engaging all the staterooms on one side of the steamer and occupying a whole floor in the “palaces” it patronized.

“How many things have happened since I was here last!”

Robledo’s cheerful face became grave as he remembered the struggles of those two hard years during which he had fought ill-luck and failure, in order to make it possible for the works on the Rio Negro to be taken up again.

He had known all the anxieties of rapidly accumulating debts and the demands of creditors who cannot be paid. Nearly all the inhabitants of La Presa had abandoned the town when the river destroyed the works. The infrequent travellers who journeyed that way came principally to see the ruins, like those of the dead historic cities of the old world, and viewed with astonishment here in this land where ruins were scarcely known.

But at last the government had taken up the work again. Little by little the river allowed itself to be brought under control, and finally accepted even the obstructing dam. Then it was that Robledo’s and Watson’s canals drank their first waters, letting the vivifying irrigating stream run over their oozy beds. After that had been accomplished, all that was needed was a little time to allow the miracle of water to work its own lesser miracles. Then men from all the lands of the globe began streaming into the dead settlement, eager to break up and cultivate this new soil which would ultimately belong to them.

A delicate luminous green was now creeping over the fields that had before been stretches of pebbles and dust. The dry, prickly matorrales gave place to young shade trees. Nourished by the accumulated fertility of a soil that had slept for thousands of years, constantly refreshed by the water gliding at their feet, in a marvellously short space of time these young growths developed prodigiously.

The miserable adobe hovels, that had fallen into decay and ruin during the period of poverty and abandonment, were now replaced by brick buildings that were wide and low, with an inner patio copied from the Spanish architecture of the colonial period. The Gallego’s former boliche became an enormous store, employing numerous clerks, where everything that might be required by customers, whose chief occupation was cultivating the miraculously redeemed soil, could be found; all manner of business was carried on at the almacÉn, including a large amount of banking.

The owner of the “store” had other sources of income as well, since his barren fields too had become irrigated lands. He had even realized his dream of returning to Spain, leaving one of his clerks in charge of the business.

“I had a letter from don Antonio yesterday,” said Robledo with good-natured irony. “He wants us to go to Madrid. He wants to show off his house and his automobiles, and especially his friends. It seems that his dinner parties have been getting into the newspapers. And he says that he has received a decoration, and that one of these days he is to be presented to the king.... Lucky man!”

But at this reminder of her distant homeland, a shadow passed over Celinda’s face.

“She’s thinking of her father,” said Watson to his partner. “She can’t bear to think of La Presa, and of his being there alone. But I don’t see that we could help it if the old man wouldn’t come with us!”

Robledo nodded, and tried to cheer the down-cast Celinda. They had all done their best to persuade don Carlos to accompany them but he had not been able to make up his mind to leave the ranch. For him there was no particular interest in seeing the Europe where he had committed so many follies in his youth. No; he clung to his old illusions, he did not want to risk losing them. And besides, he was afraid that he would not have time to enjoy all the changes brought about on his estate.

“I have so few years left to live,” he explained; “I don’t want to waste them wandering about through strange places, when there are so many things to do here. Celinda is going to give me a lot of grandchildren to provide for, and I don’t want them to be beggars.”

Robledo’s irrigation ditches had been carried as far as the Rojas ranch, and had transformed the thin dry pasturage of other times into inviting meadows of alfalfa, always humid and green. The herds were fattening and multiplying prodigiously. In the early days don Carlos had had to ride miles in order to find one of his hard-horned, bony steers, as it strayed about the barren ranch in the hope of discovering some isolated patch of coarse grass. But now the steers, sleek and fat, their forelegs fairly doubling up under the weight of their accumulating flesh, stood munching the succulent alfalfa that surrounded them without their having to stir a hoof to reach it.

Besides the reasons he offered for not going with them, don Carlos, who was by this time the leading citizen of the region, felt that he would lose his importance in those gringo countries where nobody knew his name and where no one would make a fuss over him. He had even avoided trips to Buenos Aires since the friends of his youth had died. Their sons and grandsons showed only too plainly that they didn’t know who he was! But at La Presa, where he was known as the wealthiest land-owner of the district, every one treated him with a respect verging on reverence. Moreover, he was a municipal judge there, and the immigrants, the cultivators of chacras or small farms, in recognition of his authority and wisdom consulted him on all sorts of subjects and accepted his decisions as gospel.

“What would I be doing in Paris?... Bragging about all I had left at home?... No, no, leave me with my own people. Let every steer chew his own cud!”

But it cost the old man something to part with his grandchildren, although the separation was not to be a long one. And when Celinda, and the gringo, her husband, came back, the oldest boy would be just old enough for his grandfather to teach him how to ride, as every good creole should.

This particular grandchild was now playing with Robledo, climbing onto his knees and delightedly diving off backwards on to the carpet.

“Carlitos, darling!” implored his mother. “Do let your uncle Manuel have a little peace!”

Then she went on, in reply to what Robledo had been saying about her father,

“It’s true that he didn’t want to come. But I can’t help feeling disappointed about his not being here to see all that we see.”

A young woman, elegantly dressed, approached the group. This was the young French governess, to whom had been deputed the education of young Carlos. It was time for him now to take a walk in the Bois de Boulogne. But he didn’t want to go and all his mother’s petting did not succeed in quelling the spoiled child’s protests.

“I want to stay with uncle Manuel!”

But it seemed that uncle Manuel had to go out alone, as he told the small tyrant, quite with the air of offering him an apology.

“If you do what mama asks and go to the Bois with Mademoiselle, I’ll tell you a story tonight, a long one, when you go to bed.”

Carlitos gave this promise a favorable reception, and without further objections, allowed himself to be carried off by his governess.

“There goes our young despot,” exclaimed Robledo, pretending immense satisfaction at being rid of him.

Celinda smiled. She knew well enough that Robledo had concentrated on this child of hers all the latent affection that childless and lonely men have it in them to expend as they draw near the boundaries of old age. He was already very rich and his fortune could not help but increase as the irrigated lands came under cultivation. Sometimes, when mention was made of his millions, he would look at Celinda’s son, dignifying him with the name of “my chief heir.” A part of his fortune would of course go to some nephews of his in Spain, whom he had seen once or twice; but the major part of his fortune was destined to Carlitos.

For Watson’s other children he had a great deal of affection also; but this first born had come into the world during a period that for Robledo was full of bitterness and uncertainty; when all of his work was in danger of being irretrievably lost; and for this reason he had for the child that special tenderness that one reserves for the companion of evil days.

“What are you going to do this afternoon?” Robledo asked of Celinda. “The same thing as usual, I suppose?... call on the most distinguished dressmakers of the Rue de la Paix, and the adjacent streets?”

Celinda, with a nod, gave her approval of this program, while Watson laughed good-humoredly.

“I’m afraid you’ll never be able to get on the boat,” warned the Spaniard gravely.

“But think how hard it is to buy anything where we come from!” exclaimed Celinda. “The place we live in is just as though it were the first week after the Creation. The only difference between us and Adam and Eve is that we have a few more neighbors, a few more clothes, and that we happen to be millionaires!”

They all laughed. But again their eyes grew dreamy as they thought of the scenes that they had helped to make. The camp at the dam had developed into what was now known as “Colonia Celinda”; and it was impossible to think of it without thinking also of the old man who was directing the development of the property, and who, as homes multiplied around him, seemed to grow smaller and smaller, while his profile took on a new sharpness of outline, making him resemble, as he stood listening to the men and women who came to him with their difficulties, a kindly but authoritative old patriarch.

And while the tentacles of the canal system were slowly creeping through the ancient basin of the Rio Negro, changing the once arid lands into fertile prairies, a stream of immigrants was bringing new money, new blood, new energy to the colony; and as they paid in year by year the purchase price of their farms, millions poured into the company’s offices.

And to Robledo there was a certain irony in the fact that wealth had come to him when he was already too old to feel the desires that tempt and divert other men. Watson’s children were already millionaires, many times over; it would never fall to their lot to know the enslaving power of toil, nor the anxieties of the need of money; and at their coming of age they would undoubtedly come to Paris to pour out on its pleasures a part of their princely inheritance, attracting attention even there by their extravagances and the glitter of their idle and useless lives. But the very force of the contrast between their lives and his amused Robledo, and with the smiling fatalism of the man who in a long lifetime has known want and bitterness, he accepted this termination of his labors, finding it quite in keeping with the usual ironies of life.

There was another contrast too, one which he often pondered, in the circumstances of his career. While he had been making himself a millionaire, one half of humanity, all that part of it separated from him by a wide ocean, had been suffering the horrors of a ghastly war. The first effect of this cataclysm had been to endanger his own enterprise, for the foreign colonists on his land had hastened to abandon their farms in order to join the troops of their respective nations. Then suddenly this general exodus stopped, to be followed by a veritable flood of new colonists.

Meanwhile, violent transformations were taking place in Europe. Many of those whom twelve years earlier he had known as rich men, were now poverty-stricken, or else had disappeared. On the other hand, he, who in those days had been a mere aspirant to fortune, a colonist whose future was of the most doubtful, now felt wearied by the exaggerated dimensions of his prosperity. He thought of himself as being like the steers of his friend don Carlos, who, overwhelmed by the very plentifulness of their fodder, stood knee-deep in alfalfa on legs too slender to support their enormous weight, while they looked with eyes that showed no trace of desire at the quantities of pasturage surrounding them.

Watson and Celinda were young, they still had illusions and desires, they had innumerable uses for their wealth. Celinda knew all the pleasures of luxury, and her husband could gratify that most universal of all the desires of a lover, the desire to give Celinda everything that she wanted. But as to himself, Manuel Robledo, multi-millionaire of the Argentine, not even the most innocent pleasures reserved to old age had for him any charm. Riches had come too late; he had no time now to learn what to do with them.

The greater part of his life had been spent in an effort to simplify, to do without comforts, and now he no longer needed, no longer desired, the things other people considered indispensable. Celinda and her husband kept an expensive automobile standing at the hotel entrance from early morning till late at night. They could not live without having this means of locomotion at their beck and call. One would suppose that these two former crack riders had possessed a car from the moment they were born. Ah, youth! What a marvellous adaptability it possesses for every kind of pleasure and luxury! Only in cases of urgent haste did Robledo remember that he could purchase the services of an automobile. But on all other occasions he preferred to walk or to employ the same means of locomotion as those used by people of moderate circumstances.

“It isn’t meanness, nor miserliness,” Celinda used to say, for with her woman’s keenness of observation, she had learned to understand Robledo. “He simply doesn’t think of these things, because they mean nothing to him.”

The two engineers started from their day-dream as they heard Celinda inquire,

“And what are you going to do this afternoon, don Manuel? Why not come with me to the dressmaker’s, so that you’ll know just what you are talking about when you make fun of women’s frivolous pastimes?”

But Robledo had other plans.

“I have a call to make, on a former classmate who wants me to help him out in a business matter ... a poor devil who’s out of luck ... but he has a scheme for manufacturing agricultural implements, and it may be that all he needs to set him on his feet is a little capital. He has invented a new kind of plow, he writes me.”

The three friends walked slowly out to the street, and Richard and his young wife got into their car. Robledo however preferred to walk to the Place de L’Etoile, where he took the mÉtro to Montmartre.

It was a late spring afternoon, the air was mild, the sky soft with a golden haze. Robledo swung along with the quick step of youth. Suddenly the image of his unfortunate companion Torre Bianca crossed his mind. This was scarcely strange for when he had last been in Paris it was as his friend’s guest, and it was together that they had all three set out from the brilliant capital to seek their fortune in the deserts of northern Argentine.... Natural enough too that the thought of this other engineer friend of his whom he was at that moment going to see, who was in desperate straits also, and burdened with a family, should make him think of the ill-fated marquÉs.

Very often in the last twelve years, in the life of monotonous work that he had led, with few new impressions coming in to blot out old ones, he had thought of Torre Bianca’s tragic story and had wondered what had been Elena’s fate after her flight....

Nor was it easy to forget the woman whose evil influence persisted so long after she herself had disappeared. The old inhabitants of La Presa who had remained faithful to the land and had not abandoned the ruined town, had handed down the legend of how a woman had come to that desert community from the old world, a woman who, beautiful and possessed of a fateful charm, had brought ruin and death to all those who had fallen under her spell. Those who knew her only from hearing the legend that had grown up about her, imagined her a kind of witch, and attributed to the vanished “Cara Pintada,” the “Painted Face,” all kinds of nameless crimes! It was even whispered that at times those who strayed in solitary spots along the river bank, caught glimpses of her, and always she brought evil upon those to whom she appeared....

On his occasional trips to Buenos Aires, Robledo had tried to get some news of that Moreno who had been the companion of Elena’s flight. But he had never been able to learn anything definite. Evidently both fugitives had vanished in the restless crowds of Europe, as completely and tracelessly as do those who sink in the frothing sea.

“She must have died,” Robledo would say to himself. “Without doubt she is dead. A woman of her kind would not be likely to live long.”

And for months at a time she would drop out of his mind; then some allusion on the part of the old inhabitants would awaken his memories of the vanished marquesa.

As he went down the steps of the station near the Arc de Triomphe, he had quite forgotten the unlucky couple. The human tide sweeping into the depths of the mÉtro carried him along with it, and in a few minutes he climbed out to the street level, once more on the opposite side of the city.

As evening closed in he left his friend’s house which was in a modest side street, and walked along the boulevard Rochechuart, towards the Place Pigalle.

On his evening excursions through Montmartre with South American friends, eager to enjoy the puerile and specious delights of all-night restaurants, he had never gone further than this square. Moreover the aspect of this part of Paris is by night far more pleasing than by day.

The crowds passing along the boulevard he was following were of ordinary or vulgar appearance. Evidently the Montmartre of which foreigners spoke with such enthusiasm, whose name was uttered as though it were a magic word by the members of certain youthful groups on the other side of the Atlantic, began at the Place Pigalle. This boulevard Rochechuart was like a frontier region and lacked any distinctive character of its own. Doubtless its inhabitants were poor devils expelled from Montmartre proper by the necessity of finding cheaper lodgings than were available in that famous quarter, or else they were novices in the life of pleasure, who had not yet acquired the clothes nor the manners suitable for a successful night-restaurant career.

As darkness thickened, the number of women on the street increased.... For them the kind uncertainties of twilight were a necessary assistance in their pursuit of men and bread.

Robledo passed them as though blind to their glances and deaf to their whisperings. “Young man,” he thought he heard, and “a handsome fellow.”

“Poor creatures! To get a meal they feel obliged to tell these outrageous lies....”

Suddenly his attention was drawn to one of them. There was little to distinguish her from the others. Like them she was looking at him with bold and provoking glances. But those eyes ... where had he seen those eyes?

She was dressed with a kind of poverty stricken elegance. Her clothes, old and faded, had once, long years ago, been of handsome material, and fashionable cut. From a distance they might still deceive; and she still preserved a slenderness which, with her unusual height, made one forget momentarily the ravages poverty and age had made upon her.

When she saw Robledo stopping to look at her, she smiled at him with childish sincerity. This was a promising catch, the best of the afternoon. Her prospective customer had all the appearance of being a rich foreigner wandering without his bearings in a quarter he had never strayed into before, and to which he was not likely to return. There was no time to lose.

Meanwhile Robledo stood motionless, looking at her with frowning brows as he searched his memory.

“Who is this woman?... Where the devil have I seen her?”

She too had stopped, turning back to smile and invite him with a gesture to follow her.

Robledo’s expression showed that he was alternating between surprise and doubt.

Could it be?... But he had thought her dead years ago! No, it was impossible. He had been thinking of her that very afternoon, that was why he had made this mistake.... It would be too extraordinary a coincidence....

He was still eyeing her, believing that he recognized the past in certain lines of that faded face, and confused by others which he did not recognize. But those eyes! Those eyes!

The woman smiled once more, slightly moving her head, and repeating her silent invitations. Impelled by curiosity, Robledo involuntarily made a scarcely perceptible gesture of acceptance, and she walked on. But she had taken only a few steps when she stopped before the screen door leading into a bar of squalid appearance through the smeared windows of which he saw vapid faces staring. Standing at the door of this place she winked at him and then disappeared into the interior of the filthy establishment.

Robledo stood hesitant. It disgusted him to think of having the slightest of relations with this woman, but at the same time his curiosity about her made him uncomfortable. He felt certain that if he went away without speaking with her he would forever be tormented by a persistent doubt, he would always regret not having made sure whether this phantom of Elena had really been Elena herself.

And fear of being obsessed by this doubt turned the scale of his indecision.... With a violent push he swung open the door.

Tables, a decrepit cane settee against the wall; dingy mirrors, and a counter behind which were numerous shelves full of bottles, guarded by a woman, old and monstrously fat, her face mottled with pimples and scabs.

Robledo recognized the place as one of those frequented by women, who though dependent on the day’s chance meetings for their sustenance, still wish to preserve a certain independence, though often enough they are glad to accept the services of the proprietress of the saloon to which they bring patrons, as adviser and procuress.

A waiter of effeminate appearance was serving the clients who at this moment were two; one, a young woman so ghastly pale that it seemed the hollows and joints of her skull would soon show through the tight-drawn transparent skin. In the intervals between her convulsive coughs she puffed hungrily at a cigarette. At another table sat a woman, now old and abject, who perhaps had been handsome in her youth. She too, like the woman Robledo had followed, still preserved a distinctive slenderness, but her clothes and general appearance indicated a more advanced stage of poverty. She was drinking, with slow gulps, the contents of a large glass, closing her eyes and rolling her head on the back of the divan as though she were drunk.

When Robledo came in he noticed that the woman he was seeking had gone to sit down at a table at the back of the room, at as great a distance as possible from the counter and the other patrons. His own arrival created quite a stir. The proprietress welcomed him with an obsequious smile, and the consumptive girl cast him a glance which was intended to be passionate but which Robledo took as a pathetic begging for alms. The drunken woman also gave him a smile which revealed the absence of several front teeth. Then she winked an invitation at him, but on seeing that all his attention was directed elsewhere, she cynically shrugged her shoulders and dozed off again.

He sat down at a table opposite the woman who had aroused his curiosity, so as to be able to watch her more closely than was possible in the street; and he almost smiled as he discovered how deceptive the vagabond’s appearance of shabby elegance was.

From a distance the air with which she wore her clothes might have taken in the humble or the imaginative man who is disposed to believe in the elegance of any woman who pays him some attention. But viewed close at hand this elegance was discovered to be so fictitious as to be grotesque. Her hat, of impressive proportions, revealed a frayed brim and broken feathers. Her skirt, when she sat down, left her legs exposed and it would have been difficult to count the holes and darns in her stockings. One of her shoes was worn through to the ground, and on the other the leather had split over one of the toes. Her face was covered with rouge and a white paste which did not succeed in concealing its wrinkles and other signs of a hard life. But those eyes!

There were moments when he felt convinced ... this was Elena. They both looked at one another fixedly. Then, with a gesture, she asked if she could draw nearer and finally came to sit down at his table.

“I thought we had better come in here to talk. Men don’t usually like to be seen with a woman in the street. Most of them are married. But perhaps you are not like the others in that respect....”

Her voice was hoarse; it did not in any way recall the one he had heard twelve years ago; yet, in spite of this fact, his conviction grew.

“It is she,” he thought. “There is no doubt of it....”

“I may be wrong,” the woman went on. “But I think you must be a bachelor. I don’t see any wedding ring....”

And she looked smilingly at the masculine hands on the table opposite her. But something else preoccupied her far more than the civil status of the gentleman who had followed her. She kept looking anxiously toward the counter near which the waiter had taken up a position, in expectation of the new patron’s order.

“May I order something?” she asked. “The whiskey here is fine. There’s no better in the city.”

When he saw the gentleman nod, the waiter came up, and without waiting for directions, brought a whiskey bottle and two glasses. After pouring out the drinks he withdrew to a discreet distance, not, however, without casting at Robledo a glance and smile that closely resembled those bestowed upon him by the mistress of the establishment.

The woman drained her glass with avidity, and then, as she noticed that the contents of the other glass was still untouched, an imploring look passed through her eyes.

“Before the war, whiskey didn’t cost much, but now ... only kings and millionaires can afford it. May I ...?”

The hand stretched out toward Robledo’s glass trembled with eagerness. He nodded, and the woman drained this glass too at a gulp.

The liquor seemed to dispel the torpor he had noticed in her words and gestures. Her eyes brightened, and she began speaking more rapidly. Suddenly she asked him in Spanish,

“Where are you from? I knew at once from your accent that you were American ... South American.... From Buenos Aires perhaps?”

Robledo shook his head, and gravely produced a lie.

“I am a Mexican.”

“I don’t know Mexico very well. I spent a few days in Vera Cruz once, between steamers. But I know the Argentine. I lived there once, years ago.... Where haven’t I been! There isn’t a language on earth that I don’t speak! That’s why the men like me, and my women friends are all envious.”

Robledo was looking fixedly at her. This woman was Elena, he could no longer doubt it. Yet there remained here nothing of the woman he had known in the past. The last twelve years weighed on her more heavily than all her previous existence, stamping her with all the repugnant and distressing signs of moral and physical decrepitude.

He had been able to recognize her only because, leading a solitary, monotonous life, his impressions of the past remained clear and distinct, refreshed from time to time by long hours of brooding remembering, and never blotted out under new impressions, superimposed. She, on the other hand, had lived so rapidly, had seen so many men pass through her life, that she could not remember Robledo. To do so she would have to make a determined effort of attention. And besides Robledo too had changed with the years. Yet, with the never quite dormant instinct of the professional courtesan, who, living by the chase, develops a kind of tactual memory, she too felt that somewhere this man had sat near her before.

“I can’t remember where we have met,” she said, with a reminiscence of the marquesa’s manners. “I have passed through so many countries and I have known so many men ...!”