WATSON, as he went on towards the town, felt the prick of a conscience that has lost its accustomed tranquility.

With remorse he remembered the brief dialogue in Canterac’s park, in the course of which he had answered Robledo harshly.

“And for this woman,” he thought, “for this woman who coolly sends men to their death, I treated my best friend in such fashion!”

And after Robledo’s image came that of Celinda, with unhappy, reproachful eyes....

“Poor Flor de Rio Negro,” he thought to himself. “Tomorrow I must go beg her to forgive me ... if she will listen to me....”

Absorbed in his thoughts, he rode into La Presa, letting his horse pick the way. Suddenly he noticed that the animal was hesitating, about to stop. Raising his head Watson saw that he was in front of Elena’s house.

The comisario, assisted by two of his men, was with paternal exhortations gently shoving the last group of curiosity-mongers out of the way.

Don Roque followed them down the street, and Richard was about to ride on when he noticed that one of the windows of the Torre Bianca’s house had opened. A woman’s hand was beckoning to him. Watson remained indifferent to the summons, and the window swung out wide enough to let Elena appear in the opening. She was dressed in black, as though in mourning, but she wore her floating veils with considerable coquetry.

Richard felt that he must at least approach the house sufficiently to offer his greetings. He took off his hat in response to Elena’s affectionate signs to him.

“Such a long time since I have seen you, Ricardo!... Come in at once....”

But he shook his head, looking at her sternly.

“You do not ask for whom I am in mourning,” she went on. “It is for my husband’s mother, a dear old lady whom I loved very much. I feel so bad about this loss.... And I do so need at this very moment to talk to a friend....”

As she spoke she tried to maintain a sorrowful expression, although at the same time she was employing every gracious word and gesture she knew to persuade him to come in. But Richard persistently shook his head, and said, finally,

“I shall come to see you when you are living in some other house, and when your husband is present. I cannot come now.”

Coldly he went away without turning around; and Elena’s emotions ran the scale from intense surprise to hot anger. Finally she banged the window shut with a violence that threatened to demolish it.

That night after supper Watson offered Robledo his apologies for his unfriendly words to him at the garden fÊte; but Robledo cut him short.

“That’s all over and done with, Watson. We’re as good friends as before, aren’t we? So what does all that matter? The terrible part of this affair is what happened to poor Pirovani ... and in some ways it’s even worse for Canterac. Of course his words make an impression on you. Poor fellow! He wouldn’t take anything more than what was absolutely necessary for his journey over the mountains. He’s going to wait for news from me in Chile, he says. I must get some letters of recommendation for him from friends of mine in Buenos Aires.... But what a catastrophe, Watson!... And all for a woman!”

Robledo was silent for a while. Then he added optimistically,

“She isn’t bad, she’s merely a woman of impulse, whose emotions have never had the slightest training; and so she sows evil, without knowing always what she is doing, because all her attention is centered on herself. She has never discovered that she isn’t the center of the universe. If she were rich, she would perhaps be good. But she cannot be content with a modest sort of existence, and she’s incapable of sacrificing herself. All the trouble in her life comes from the fact that she has so little and desires so much!”

He smiled sadly and then went on after a pause,

“Fortunately all women are not like that. She herself told me that in this age of ours, the woman who thinks at all is unhappy and hates all the rest of creation if she can’t have the pearl necklace that is ‘the modern woman’s uniform’.... I am quoting.... But there is something more terrible still than the woman who is determined to get a pearl necklace for herself, Richard, and that is the woman who having had it once, has lost it, and feels that she must at any cost get it back!”

The memory of Gualicho, the demon who tormented the Indians with his wiles, driving them to the point where they mounted their horses and pursued him with darts and tomahawks, passed through his mind. Elena, in the old world, would have been merely one of many dangerous women; and her powers for evil would have been checked and neutralized by the proximity of others like herself. But here, surrounded by men who admired her, conscious of primitive surroundings among which she stood out like a being of finer clay, she had, without wishing to, exerted an influence as evil as that of the red-skinned demon, in former times the terror of the wandering gauchos of the Pampas.

She herself had been a victim of the loneliness of her surroundings to the extent at least of becoming enamored of Watson. She had believed that she could play with men and despise them. That at least was what she had intimated to Robledo one evening, while she gazed pityingly at her victims. But Richard was youth, and masculine energy incarnate; he was, moreover, the object of a young girl’s first love; and so to this mature coquette, eager to win him away from an inexperienced adolescent, as a proof that her former powers of seduction had not yet waned, he represented an irresistible temptation.... And now her vanity had been cruelly wounded. Not only had the only man she had found interesting in this wild desert repulsed her; she had every reason to believe that he despised her....

Robledo meanwhile went on talking about the marquesa with a somewhat contemptuous pity.

“She really believes that she was born for higher things, and yet fate seems determined to make her roll downhill.... It isn’t surprising that she should appear to be a bad woman, when you consider that she doesn’t know what resignation means.”

But the effect of Elena’s influence on affairs at the dam was sufficiently alarming....

“Our contractor dead ... our chief engineer a fugitive.... How can we carry on the work, Watson? The construction at the dam will be delayed and the spring floods will come before we have braced the walls. What are we going to do? I’ll have to run up to Buenos Aires to get help.”

And he spent most of the night worrying about what was to be done to save three years’ labor from destruction.

The next morning Watson got on his horse; but instead of riding towards the canal works he took the road to the Rojas ranch. There was no use going on with this secondary part of the work until the government sent down a new engineer to take over the completing of the work on the dam.

When he reached the ranch he was about to dismount and open the “palisade,” or barrier poles that closed the way. But near it he discovered a small half-breed, about ten years of age, a chubby little fellow with velvety antelope’s eyes, and a skin of a lustrous light chocolate color. The small boy, one finger in his nose, was smiling at him.

“The master went out early this morning,” he said in reply to Richard’s question. “Last night someone stole one of his cows.”

“And where’s your mistress, Cachafaz?”

Young Puck, who had earned his name Cachafaz through an unbelievable series of deviltries, took his finger out of his nose, and pointed vaguely to the horizon line.

“She just now left. You’ll find her somewhere near.”

And with his dirty forefinger he gestured in a zigzag towards the distant desert. Watson grasped the fact that for young master Cachafaz “just now” might mean one hour, or two or three, and “somewhere near” might mean anywhere within two leagues. But he must see Celinda! Determined to find her, he set his horse off at a gallop towards the open, trusting that luck would lead him in the right direction.

But what young Cachafaz had not told the visitor was that, in his estimable mother’s opinion, the little mistress of the ranch was sick. Cachafaz’s mother was an old Indian woman who had come to take Sebastiana’s place as housekeeper; but she lacked some of Sebastiana’s virtues; she had neither her good humor nor her talent for work. All day long she kept a Paraguay cigar in one corner of her blue, nicotine-stained lips, and when don Carlos wasn’t at home, she used his carved calabash and silver bombilla for the absorption of her own mate.

The servants and peons at the ranch looked upon Cachafaz’s mother with superstitious respect, for it was generally believed that she was a witch and held dealings with the invisible spirits of the air, those that howl as they whirl inside the sand columns as high as towers, that the hurricanes drive in front of them when they come down from the plateau lands. When the old squaw noticed that Celinda was in very poor spirits indeed and found her crying several times, she shook her head knowingly, as though all this merely confirmed her suspicions.

“The trouble with the girl is that she’s sick, and I know what sickness she’s sick of.”

An ancestor of the old woman’s had been a great medicine man back in the times when the Indians were still the owners of the land. He was always summoned whenever the chiefs fell sick. His son had inherited his secret lore, but unfortunately he had handed on only a part of it to his daughter, who became Cachafaz’s mother.

“It’s the ayacuyas that are bothering the girl, and she must be cured of the wounds left by their arrows.”

The old squaw was well acquainted with the ayacuyas, hob-goblins so diminutive that a dozen of them would scarcely cover a finger nail; they always carried bows and arrows, and it was the wounds from these weapons that caused most of the sicknesses in the world.

She herself had never seen them, for she was nothing but a poor ignorant, miserable old woman, but her father, and her grandfather before him, who had been great machis or medicine men, had often had dealings with these little creatures. Only the native Indians could see them. Some of the gringo doctors pretended to have seen them too, and called them by a name in their own language, microbe, but what did they know about them ...?

And if you took their bows and arrows away from them, they attacked human beings with tooth and nail, and it was important to know how, by bleeding and sucking, to get the splinters of the arrows, or the nails and teeth that the invisible demons left in the bodies of their victims, out of the poisoned wounds.

“I’ll find you a machi who’ll make you well, little lady, and take away this sadness that the ayacuyas brought upon you. But don’t let the master know of it.”

Celinda smiled at the remedies suggested by Cachafaz’s mother. When she grew tired of being shut up in the ranch house she went to get her horse and rode him hither and yon over the desert with no goal to reach. She never wore boy’s clothes now. She hated those clothes because of the memories they awoke. She preferred riding in skirts; and she had laid aside too the lassoo that had once been her favorite plaything.

That morning she had been galloping for more than an hour over the ranch when she noticed, on a slight elevation, a rider standing motionless; the distance diminished him to the size of a little tin soldier.

She stopped when she noticed that the miniature rider was plunging down the slope and galloping towards her as though he had recognized her. For some time he was lost to sight, then he reappeared, much bigger in size, on the edge of a deep depression. When she saw that the rider was Watson, her first impulse was to flee. But she repented of this impulse as though it were cowardly, and turning her horse about, remained motionless in a disdainful attitude.

Richard rode up to her, and with his hat in his hand and eyes humbly cast down, he was about to beg pardon. He opened his mouth to speak but the words would not come. Nor did Celinda give him time.

“What do you want?” she asked harshly. “Has your gringa dismissed you? Other people’s leavings aren’t welcome here.”

And she wheeled her horse about to ride away. Richard made a desperate effort.

“Celinda! I’ve come to tell you I’m sorry.... I came to get my Flor de Rio Negro ... to....”

She softened a little at the note of child-like humility in the young man’s voice; but at once she recovered herself and looked at him unforgivingly.

“Ask alms of God, brother, and go your way. Today I have no alms to give!”

She began to move away; but she stopped long enough to tell him with the cruelty of a spoiled child,

“I don’t like men who ask for pardon. Anyway, I vowed that if you wanted to see me again you’d have to catch me with the rope.... But you’ll never be able to. You’re nothing but a tenderfoot, and a gringo, and you’re awkward and I don’t like you!”

And spurring her horse she went off at a gallop, not however, before casting Richard a look of complete scorn.

He stood distressed by this dismissal, and felt no desire to follow her. Then his vanity took offense as he went over the words that she had thrown at him. She had belittled him as a man, and he was going to get hold of her and show her that he was no tenderfoot nor as awkward as she made out.

Then began a wild race through the ranch, one rider following the other up hill and down, from ridge to gully. Now and then Celinda, who had a great advantage over her pursuer, would rein in her horse as though she wanted to be overtaken; but as soon as he came near, she started off at a gallop again, insulting him with the terms that the gauchos of other days used when they made fun of the awkward Europeans and their lack of skill as riders.

“Clodhopper gringo! Tenderfoot, who doesn’t know one end of a horse from another!”

Richard kept a coil of lariat that Flor de Rio Negro had given him on the front of his saddle. As he rode along he let it out and began throwing it over her head every time he came near her. But the lassoo always fell into space, while Celinda, from far away, laughed at this exhibition. However, her laughter had changed its character and was growing heartier and happier, as though expressing, not so much contempt for the man she was mocking, as genuine merriment. Watson too was laughing; so often, when they had laughed together, they had made up their quarrels!

In their circlings about they had little by little approached the ranch. Celinda jumped her horse over an obstacle of tree-trunks and rode into the corral. Watson did not dare let his horse take the height and rode around the palisade in order to get in through a gate.

He reached the main building of the ranch with calculated slowness, hoping that someone would come out to whom he could speak. Celinda remained invisible, and he did not dare go up to the front door of the house, for fear the seÑorita Rojas might receive him in unfriendly fashion.

Again little Cachafaz appeared quite providentially, close to the horse’s feet.

“Tell the seÑorita Celinda I would like to come in and say ‘how do you do’ to her!”

Cachafaz went away scratching his little fat chocolate colored belly under his loose shirt. In a few minutes he came out of the house, and in his soft Indian singsong he announced to Watson,

“Mistress says you’re to go away, and that she doesn’t want to see you, because you are ... because you are very ugly!”

Cachafaz burst out laughing at his own words; but Watson looked despondently at the house. Then he turned his horse about, and, a little consoled by a resolution he had just taken, rode homeward.

“I shall come back tomorrow,” he said to himself. “I shall come back every day until she forgives me.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Elena sat absorbed in thought, sitting in an armchair. Then she took up a position near the window where she could look out on the main street without being seen.

As a matter of fact she could be seen only by two of the four policemen of La Presa. Don Roque had placed them near the house so that there should be no more gathering in groups around it as on the day before. For the moment the people of the settlement seemed to have forgotten Pirovani’s former dwelling. No one seemed at all inclined to stop in front of it, and the comisario’s precaution seemed superfluous. Besides many of the workmen from the dam had gone to Fuerte Sarmiento to be present at the contractor’s funeral. The others were either in the Gallego’s shop, or gathering to talk in different places on the outskirts of the town, where they heatedly discussed the possibility of the immediate suspension of the work, which would leave most of them out of employment.

Some of the more optimistic ones were certain that on the very next train a new chief engineer would arrive, quite as though the government at Buenos Aires could not go on for a day without starting up the works at the dam again. The Galician and some of the other Spaniards were betting on don Manuel Robledo as the new director of the works.

Some of the old peons who had labored on all the public works of the country shrugged their shoulders with characteristic fatalism.

“The cart is caught in the mire, and you’ll see a long time pass before its wheels revolve again!”

Meanwhile Elena, standing behind the window, was gazing at the solitary street and mentally reviewing all the difficulties of her present situation. Pirovani dead ... Canterac a fugitive ... she no longer even knew who owned the house she was living in. Besides this, Robledo must have been talking about her to the only man whose presence gave emotional interest to the monotony of her life in that God-forsaken country. Perhaps at that very moment this man, whom she needed, was with that girl who had tried to lash her face with a riding whip....

Never, in the whole course of her complicated history, the many phases of which she alone knew, had she found herself placed in a situation so difficult. Even that heterogeneous mob, in which there was many a man with a European crime record, dared to criticize her, and went so far as to force the public authorities to set a guard over her ... there they were, those two men armed with sabres, just within sight of her window. And she had crossed the ocean and come to live in this wild land only to find herself in this lamentable situation!

She had always found a way out of the difficulties of her life, she had always discovered a solution. Sometimes it was a bad one, and sometimes profitable ... but what was the solution of the difficulties that faced her now?... Should she go away? But how? She and her husband were as penniless as when they arrived; more so, since Robledo was not going to pay their fare back. And where could they go, with the law lying in wait for her husband if he should return to Paris?

She was terrified at the thought of remaining in La Presa. Her life there had been tolerable up to the present, thanks to Pirovani’s generosity, and the rivalry she had stirred up among the men of the community. But now that the Italian was dead she would have to give up this house that was palatial compared to the other dwellings of the settlement. No one would come any more to admire her, pay her attentions, and desire her, doing everything to make life agreeable for her. Only Robledo remained ... and he was an enemy! And as for Watson, who might have provided the solution she was seeking ... there was his partner in the way!

An idea that she had been cherishing of late passed through her mind. When she had been out riding with Watson, it had occurred to her more than once that now was the time to leave Torre Bianca, who was, after all, a failure, who would never succeed in getting ashore from the shipwreck.... But with Watson she would be able to make her way in the world. He was young, energetic.... With the advice of an experienced woman to guide him through a life of adventure, he would succeed anywhere. In her previous life she had had similar experiences under far less favorable circumstances.... But of what use to think about Watson? This solution was denied her. An implacable hate burned in her at the thought.

Richard had gone away for good and all. She could not doubt that, after the words they had exchanged while she stood at her window the day before....

Perhaps it would be easy to win him back if she could only have him alone with her for a while. But, aware of that danger, hadn’t he told her bluntly that he would call upon her again only if her husband were present? The tone in which he had spoken, and his look at her as he spoke, had shown her clearly enough that he would be immovable on this point.

Ignorant as she could not help but be of the young man’s conversation with Canterac after the duel, she naturally attributed his change of manner to Celinda’s influence.

“She has taken him away from me,” the older woman thought. “It is she who stands in my way.... How I hate her!”

And while she pursued these reflections, she felt agitated and divided by diverse and opposing thoughts as though she were two distinct persons. The image of Watson comforted her even in these painful moments. He was young, he was the master fated to come along sometime in the life of a woman who has played coldly and cruelly with men. In all her previous life she had sought men out of ambition or vanity. But now she needed Watson; she needed him not only because he could get her out of the critical situation in which she found herself, but because he was youth and strength and resourcefulness, he was everything she lacked, everything her weary life needed. And as though that were not enough, she felt the pain of jealousy, the jealousy of an impulsive and mature woman who sees her last hope of happiness snatched away by a rival young enough to be her daughter.

And with this torment, there was all the difficulty of the tragic situation created by the rivalry she had excited between two of her admirers; and there was the urgent necessity of protecting herself against the general hostility that was likely to pursue her throughout the whole community.

“What am I to do?” she kept saying to herself. “Where shall I go?”

A knock at the drawing room door interrupted her. It was Sebastiana, who came in with a timid, undecided expression, fingering a corner of her apron, and smiling at her mistress as though looking for words in which to explain what had brought her there.

Elena gave her a little encouragement, and finally the half-breed plucked up courage enough to speak.

“I was in the employ of don Pirovani, and as he is dead now ... and for the reason that everybody knows, I must go away.”

The marquesa signified her surprise at this decision. Sebastiana could remain, of course. She was pleased with her services. The contractor’s death was not sufficient reason for her going. As long as she must work somewhere, she might as well work for Elena. But the half-breed was insistent, and went on shaking her head.

“I must go. If I stay, there are friends of mine here who’ll scratch my eyes out. Many thanks!... just the same, I’d rather stay on good terms with my people ... and ... I might as well say it ... the seÑora marquesa hasn’t any friends here.”

At this Elena deemed it prudent not to continue the conversation. So she expressed her acceptance of Sebastiana’s decision.

“Very well, if you are afraid to stay here....”

This prudence quite moved Sebastiana.

“I’d like to stay. The seÑora is very kind, and never did me any harm.... But that’s the way people are, and I can’t fight all the women in town.... But if there’s anything I can do for the seÑora, she has only to ask.... It would be a pleasure....”

Finally, after expatiating further on her desire to be useful to Elena, and her unwillingness to leave her, Sebastiana withdrew.

Near the door she stopped to reply to Elena’s question about the whereabouts of the marquÉs.

“I don’t know. He went out this morning and hasn’t come back yet. Perhaps he went to Fuerte Sarmiento with don Moreno for the funeral of my poor old master.”

When she was once more alone Elena’s thoughts turned to her husband as to someone long forgotten but now presenting himself with renewed importance. She was so accustomed to looking upon him as a person entirely lacking in desires of his own, as someone ready to accept all her notions, and disposed to believe whatever she wanted him to believe! But this latest episode of her life had been of such a violent nature.... In a large city it would have caused little more than a ripple. But here, in the monotony of life in a pioneer community, where such unprecedented events were rare, surrounded by this rabble of adventurers, predisposed to insult persons of superior rank....

She felt more and more uneasy at the thought of the possibility that Torre Bianca might learn the real cause of the rivalry between those two men whose duel he had directed. Mentally she reviewed all that had passed between her husband and herself since the previous day. On returning to the house, Federico had told her of the sad outcome of the duel; he had obviously taken certain precautions in telling her the news, as though fearful of the emotion it might cause her. But later that day he had appeared a changed man. He would not speak, he answered her questions in monosyllables. And twice she surprised him gazing fixedly at her with an expression that she had never seen him wear before. After having closed the window, to shut out the stares of the crowd that so much annoyed him, he had shut himself up in his bedroom, and had gone away the next morning very early, while Elena was still asleep. All that day she had not seen him. What was she to think?

But her uneasiness soon left her. She was so accustomed to controlling her husband that she concluded that her suspicions and fears were all uncalled for. Besides, even though her uneasiness should be well founded, she would always be able to calm and reassure him, as she had done so many times before.

The sight of a passer-by slowly walking in front of the house, and looking attentively at the windows, was enough to make her forget all about her husband ... Manos Duras! An hour earlier, when, as now, she had stood at the window, she had thought once or twice that she saw the gaucho standing at the entrance to an alley that ran into the main street near the house. The notorious cow-puncher was roaming around the town on foot just like a European laborer on a holiday. As soon as he caught sight of the marquesa on the other side of the window panes, he saluted her, taking off his hat with a flourish and showing his wolf’s teeth.

This was the first pleasant greeting that Elena had received since Pirovani’s death. She felt instinctively that this man was the only admirer left her; that this should be seemed to her so comic that she could not help smiling. Henceforth there was only one suitor for her favor whom she could count on in that part of the world ... and he was a cattle-rustling gaucho!

She stood meditating once more, her forehead pressed against the window-panes, staring at the solitary street. Manos Duras had disappeared in the neighboring alleyway, and even the two policemen, considering their vigil unnecessary, had wandered off to the boliche.

Again three discreet raps on the door ... Sebastiana entered more resolutely. This time she spoke very low, and with a confidential expression in her crafty eyes.

“Has the master come in?” asked Elena.

“No; it’s something else I’m to tell you.... I was in the corral a moment ago, and the gaucho they call Manos Duras suddenly looked in at the back gate and he said....”

Sebastiana made a valiant effort to recall the man’s words. He had charged her to tell the seÑora marquesa that he was “at her orders for anything she might choose to command, that in times of trouble one discovers one’s true friends, and now that there were so many people both in the town and outside of it, talking evil of the seÑora out of pure envy, Manos Duras was glad to have the opportunity to say that he was just the same in his sentiments as before.”

“Tell your mistress that I don’t turn around with every wind like the others, and that she will always be the same for me, for I’m one of those that break but never bend ... that’s what he told me to tell the seÑora....”

Elena received the words with a smile. Poor man! And yet there were people who said he was no better than a bandit! To her at that moment he seemed the most interesting male creature in the region; he was the only gentleman to offer her assistance!

When the half-breed went out of the room Elena remained standing near the window, her eyes following the passers-by as they came and went in constantly increasing numbers. Several times she stepped back at sight of groups of workmen on horseback or in carriages returning from Fuerte Sarmiento. They must undoubtedly be those who had gone to the contractor’s funeral. All of them, she noticed, looked askance at the house before they passed on.

At dusk she saw a solitary rider go by, his head obstinately held down. It was Richard Watson. From his dust-covered clothing, and the lagging pace of his horse, she concluded that he had not been to the funeral. He must have spent the day riding in the open, undoubtedly on the Rojas ranch or wandering near the river with that girl who was so free with her whip.—“And I have to stay shut up here like a wild beast to escape the insults of this miserable and unjust rabble ... and then they wonder that I do the things I do....”

She remained motionless, her eyes closed, while the shadows of twilight crept out of the corners of the room, and came to mingle their darkness in the core of her being. A faint and fading light from outside gave a certain bluish phosphorescence to the window panes, outlining Elena’s motionless silhouette.

When night had fallen she called Sebastiana, who answered, saying that she was bringing the light.

And she appeared bearing a large lamp which she placed on the table in the centre of the parlor.

She was on the point of going away, believing that she had discharged her full duty, when her mistress stopped her.

“Do you know where that Manos Duras you spoke to me about a while ago is now?”

The half-breed, always inclined to chatter, produced a long preamble before giving a definite reply. Manos Duras was going about these days with some friends of his from the mountains who were staying with him at his ranch ... they were a poor sort and not at all God-fearing. No telling what they might be up to ... and he had said while he was talking at the gate that he might soon go away on a long trip and that this was the principal reason why he had come to bother the seÑora, in case she should want him to do anything for her.

“And probably,” she wound up, “if he hasn’t gone back to his ranch, I’ll find him this very moment at the boliche!”

“Go find him,” said Elena, “and tell him that I want him to be in front of the house at ten o’clock.... You needn’t say anything else. But be careful how you tell him ... I don’t care to have anyone overhear....”

Sebastiana had some doubts as to whether she had heard the first words correctly, but at being admonished by her mistress to be discreet, she forgot her astonishment and began affirming vehemently that the seÑora could rest easy as to her prudence and that she was accustomed to discharging confidential missions with the utmost care.

She went out of the house and made a bee-line for the boliche. If the gaucho was not there, it would mean that he had started for his ranch.

When she reached the door of the Gallego’s establishment, she stopped and peered inside. As it was the supper hour the customers were not numerous. The majority of them had gone to their own homes where they were having their evening meal with their families. An hour later they would have returned to sit around the counter. An old gaucho was strumming the guitar while he gazed up at the paunch of one of the crocodiles hanging from the ceiling. Manos Duras’ three guests were listening attentively. Manos Duras himself was sitting on a horse’s skull, and leaning one shoulder against the wall, was smoking meditatively. As the owner of the boliche was absent, Friterini, behind the counter, was assuming all the airs of proprietorship, while he blissfully perused an ancient and greasy copy of an Italian magazine.

Manos Duras looked up when he heard a discreet cough, and saw a half-breed in the door beckoning to him to come out. When he had followed her to the rear of the Gallego’s shop, Sebastiana delivered her message in a mysterious manner, keeping one finger on her lips; she even went so far as to wink one eye. The gaucho needn’t take her for a fool. She had some idea what her message meant!

When the half-breed had gone, Manos Duras waited a few minutes before returning to the boliche. He wanted to be alone in the dark, for it seemed to him that he could enjoy his satisfaction better there. But in his satisfaction there was a great deal of astonishment. How could he have foreseen, that afternoon, as he wandered in front of the great seÑora’s house, that she would send him a message asking him to see her in private that very night?

When through Sebastiana, whom he found in the corral, he had made his offer of assistance to her mistress he had simply been, in his own special way, obeying a chivalrous impulse. He wanted to appear to the marquesa’s eyes to be a man different from the rest, and he had offered his protection without any hope that she would accept it.... Yet one hour later she was sending for him. What was she going to ask him to do for her?

Fortified by male vanity he dismissed his doubts. Even though he was a rough cattle merchant, he was after all a man; and a better one at that than these others.... They were all afraid of him ... these gringas from the other side of the world were capricious creatures ... one never knew where their fancy might lead them.... Manos Duras smiled....

“Just what I always said,” he thought, “they are all alike!”

And he returned to the boliche and sat down with his friends, waiting for the hour stipulated by the great seÑora.

Robledo and Watson were at that moment finishing their supper.

Someone knocked at the door.

They were both astonished to see Torre Bianca come in; he was so thoroughly covered with dust that his black clothes looked grey, and his hair and mustache were completely white.

“I’ve just come back from Fuerte Sarmiento, from poor Pirovani’s funeral.... Moreno brought me back in his carriage.”

Robledo invited him to sit down at the table.

“Have some supper here, if you don’t feel that you must go at once to your house.”

Torre Bianca shook his head.

“I do not intend to go back to my house.”

He spoke with such decision that Robledo stared at him. So tense were the nerves of the marquÉs that his hands shook and his tongue stumbled over the words he spoke.

“I had something to eat with Moreno before coming back here.... But I’ll eat a little now.... Death ... it’s pretty grim, isn’t it? Poor Pirovani.... I’ll have a drink if you don’t mind.”

In spite of mentioning several times that he was hungry, he ate very little of the food brought him by Robledo’s servant. But on the other hand he drank a great deal of wine, tossing it down mechanically, as though unaware that he was drinking.

Robledo thought he noticed the odor of gin about him. Undoubtedly he and Moreno had had several drinks before starting on the journey home. Perhaps this was the explanation of his excitement. He was not in the habit of drinking liquor.

Watson, who had finished his supper, noticed that Torre Bianca was looking at him as though he wanted to intimate that his presence was inopportune.

“Is Moreno at his place now?” the young American inquired.

And on hearing that he was, Watson took himself off to discuss with the government employee the report that was to be presented at Buenos Aires, urging that the work at the dam be continued.

When Torre Bianca found himself alone with his friend, he became a different person. His excitement abated suddenly, he lowered his eyes, and it seemed to Robledo that he was shrinking in his chair like something soft that huddles in on itself for lack of support from within. All the spurious energy of alcohol had vanished at a stroke and Torre Bianca, sitting opposite him there, had all the appearance of a wrapping from which the contents has been deftly removed.

“I must talk to you,” he said, lifting his mild and pleading eyes to his friend. “You are all that is left me now, the only human being in the world who cares anything about me ... and for that very reason you must let me have the truth. Today, while they were burying poor Pirovani, I could think of nothing but this.... ‘I must see Robledo. He will tell me frankly what I am to think of all this.’ What I mean by ‘all this’ is the things I have noticed since yesterday ... everywhere I go ... the way people look at me, the dislike they show in their gestures, the names I can hear them calling me in their minds ... they don’t have to speak, because I can guess it all.... Oh, it is too horrible!”

His voice broke on a note of complete discouragement and he covered his face with his hands. Robledo murmured a few words intended to cheer him up a little, but the marquÉs interrupted him.

“You can talk later, Manuel. But first you must hear some things you don’t know, and some of the things I told you once and that you have forgotten. I must ask you one thing. Do you believe that my wife is deceiving me?”

Robledo looked his astonishment at his friend’s words. Several minutes passed before he attempted to reply. It was obvious that Torre Bianca was in terror of his answer! And to avoid hearing it, he began relating the whole story of his relations with Elena.

Robledo had heard a part of this history when he was in Paris; how the marquÉs had met her in London, the high rank her family held in Russia at the court of the Czars, and so on.... But now the speaker’s tone was quite changed, as though Torre Bianca himself had his doubts about the authenticity of that past in which, up to that very day, he had had complete faith, and about which he had always shown a great deal of pride.

Furthermore, between the lines of his narrative, Federico was revealing new episodes to his friend. Apparently the events of the past stood out in clearer relief now, and his attention was caught by details that until then had passed unnoticed. There had always been in his house an intimate friend, a favored friend, whom his wife treated with the utmost confidence, asserting that she had known him since the days when she was living with her distinguished family. And when one “friend” went away, another appeared ... but the place was never vacant. Twice the marquÉs had fought duels for his wife’s honor, as a result of her being calumniated by men who but a short time before had been frequent visitors in her drawing-room. And with remorse he recalled that his antagonist in one of these duels had been a friend of his whom he had seriously wounded.

“I have told you the whole story of my life with this woman,” he said. “At least all that I am sure of concerning her life. All the rest is what she herself says ... and I don’t know whether I am to believe it or not.... I even doubt what she says about her nationality and her name. I told her frankly everything about myself ... and she gave me back lies ... lies ... lies....”

Again he looked anxiously at Robledo, hoping that the latter would give him some faith in what he had once believed.

Like a drowning man, the marquÉs was grasping at straws as he sank. But Robledo looked away, and gave an ambiguous shrug.

“Since a few hours ago I have been looking at things with new eyes. Oh God! The cruel glances of those poor people when I opened the window yesterday! And today during the funeral ... I can’t tell you what torment I endured!... And I, who never in my whole life have been afraid of anyone, I couldn’t meet the hostile eyes of those workmen ... and what was worse, some of them were mocking and contemptuous. Poor Moreno kept taking me aside, and talking very loud so that I wouldn’t hear the things people were saying behind me.... He didn’t know that I noticed everything he was doing to protect me.... But this afternoon I felt so overwhelmed, that I thought of you, my friend ... and I thought of my poor old mother as though I were still a child. She had deprived herself of everything so that her son might preserve the honor of his race! And her son ends up by being the laughing-stock of a workmen’s camp, in a wild uncivilized corner of the globe.... Oh, how shameful!”

He covered his eyes with his hands as if to shut out the cruel spectacle. Then he looked up to ask with breathless anxiety,

“You, who are my only friend, and who knew something of my life in Paris, do you believe that Fontenoy was my wife’s lover?”

Again Robledo made an ambiguous gesture. What could he reply? And again Torre Bianca, with anguish in his voice, asked,

“And those two men who went out yesterday morning to kill one another, do you think it was on Elena’s account?”

But this time Robledo did not take refuge in ambiguity. He merely lowered his eyes; and the marquÉs took the silence that followed to mean “yes”....

Then hiding his face again in desperation, he said,

“And it was I, her husband, who acted as master of the duel in which those two men fought....”

A long silence. The marquÉs laid his head down on his hands, and Robledo watched him, pityingly. Suddenly Torre Bianca straightened up, and said, slowly rubbing his forehead,

“I can’t go on here. I am ashamed to meet the eyes of these people. But I can’t go away with her, either. She couldn’t deceive me now ... and when I look, at her, and see how false she is, and how falsely she smiles, I shall kill her ... I am certain that I shall kill her!”

The moment had come for Robledo to speak.

“Don’t think about her any more. For the time being you must rest. Tomorrow we’ll find a better way of your getting rid of your wife. You’ll stay here tonight. And I’ll plan what we must do tomorrow. She will go away. I don’t know just how; but she’ll go. And you will stay with me.”

He laid an affectionate hand on Torre Bianca’s shoulder, and his tone while he spoke, was like that of a father. But the marquÉs kept his face covered, and he shook his head.

He hated her! And yet, at the thought of separating from her forever, he felt a sharp pang, a strange anxiety....