ise he had seen a deplorable levity of outlook, a fatal
lack of decision, an absence of any reasoned plan.

He shook his head.

"I feel that you of all people, Dona Rita, ought to be told the truth. I
don't know exactly what you have at stake."

She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in the flush of the
dawn.

"Not my heart," she said quietly. "You must believe that."

"I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you. . . "

"No, _Monsieur le Philosophe_. It would not have been better. Don't
make that serious face at me," she went on with tenderness in a playful
note, as if tenderness had been her inheritance of all time and
playfulness the very fibre of her being. "I suppose you think that a
woman who has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on it is . . .
How do you know to what the heart responds as it beats from day to day?"

"I wouldn't judge you. What am I before the knowledge you were born to?
You are as old as the world."

She accepted this with a smile. I who was innocently watching them was
amazed to discover how much a fleeting thing like that could hold of
seduction without the help of any other feature and with that unchanging
glance.

"With me it is _pun d'onor_. To my first independent friend."

"You were soon parted," ventured Mills, while I sat still under a sense
of oppression.

"Don't think for a moment that I have been scared off," she said. "It is
they who were frightened. I suppose you heard a lot of Headquarters
gossip?"

"Oh, yes," Mills said meaningly. "The fair and the dark are succeeding
each other like leaves blown in the wind dancing in and out. I suppose
you have noticed that leaves blown in the wind have a look of happiness."

"Yes," she said, "that sort of leaf is dead. Then why shouldn't it look
happy? And so I suppose there is no uneasiness, no occasion for fears
amongst the 'responsibles.'"

"Upon the whole not. Now and then a leaf seems as if it would stick.
There is for instance Madame . . ."

"Oh, I don't want to know, I understand it all, I am as old as the
world."

"Yes," said Mills thoughtfully, "you are not a leaf, you might have been
a tornado yourself."

"Upon my word," she said, "there was a time that they thought I could
carry him off, away from them all--beyond them all. Verily, I am not
very proud of their fears. There was nothing reckless there worthy of a
great passion. There was nothing sad there worthy of a gr