letters the one word, "Urgent,"
on the envelope.

"What shall we do?" asked she.

"When he summons you, that way," judged Candelas, "something serious
must have happened to him. Well----"

Alicia looked at her watch. It was just six. Without upsetting the
program for the evening, she could still afford the luxury of a little
condescension. She ordered the coachman:

"Number X, Calle Ballesta. Hurry!"

For a moment the two young women remained silent. Suddenly Candelas
exclaimed:

"Have you seen what the papers have been saying about the robbery in
Calle Mayor, last night?"

"No. What about it?"

"Oh, a jeweler's shop was robbed."

"A jeweler's!" repeated Alicia.

Her face assumed an expression of unspeakable anxiety and alarm. She
remembered the emerald necklace she had spoken of, so often; and she
remembered the evening, too, when Candelas and she had come across
Enrique standing motionless in front of the shop window. Suddenly the
student's sad face seemed to rise up in her memory. She seemed to be
hearing his last words: "You've never proved me. You don't know what
kind of a man I am!" And those words, that she had never paid any
attention to, now sounded in her ears with prophetic tones.

"What did they steal?" she asked.

"I can't say. I only just glanced over the paper."

"And who's the thief?"

"No one knows."

"Haven't they caught him?"

"No. He was too quick for them."

"And he got away?"

"Yes."

The mystery surrounding the criminal increased Alicia's uneasiness.
Still, it was an agreeable sensation, which caused her a certain vanity.
"Suppose the robbery really has been done for me!" she thought. She felt
a proud, unhealthy emotion, like that of man when he meets his friends
and they know some woman has killed herself for love of him.

Candelas, who could read Alicia's thoughts, exclaimed:

"Strange if the criminal were Enrique Darles!"

"I don't think it could be!"

"Well, now--it might."

"That would be a terribly bad thing for him to have done."

"Of course!"

"But if he really did do it, I don't care! Let the fool suffer for it.
Did _I_ tell him to? When you come right down to it, even if I had, what
the devil? The one that does a thing is more to blame than the one that
asks him to!"

The carriage stopped, and Alicia and Candelas got out. They made their
way in under a poverty-stricken doorway. Candelas called:

"Janitress! Janitress!"

No answer.

"Follow me,