learning my name then
for the first time.

'I shall always call you Magda,' he responded.

'And now I must go,' I stated, when I had explained to him about
the servant.

'But you'll come back?' he cried.

No question of his coming to me! I must come to him!

'To a place like this?' I demanded.

Unthinkingly I put into my voice some of the distaste I felt for his
deplorable apartments, and he was genuinely hurt. I believe that in all
honesty he deemed his apartments to be quite adequate and befitting. His
sensibilities had been so dulled.

He threw up his head.

'Of course,' he said, 'if you--'

'No, no!' I stopped him quickly. 'I will come here. I was only teasing
you. Let me see. I'll come back at four, just to see how you are. Won't
you get up in the meantime?'

He smiled, placated.

'I may do,' he said. 'I'll try to. But in case I don't, will you take my
key? Where did you put it last night?'

'I have it,' I said.

He summoned me to him just as I was opening the door.

'Magda!'

'What is it?'

I returned.

'You are magnificent,' he replied, with charming, impulsive eagerness,
his eyes resting upon me long. He was the old Diaz again. 'I can't thank
you. But when you come back I shall play to you.'

I smiled.

'Till four o'clock,' I said.

'Magda,' he called again, just as I was leaving, 'bring one of your books
with you, will you?'

I hesitated, with my hand on the door. When I gave him my name he had
made no sign that it conveyed to him anything out of the ordinary. That
was exactly like Diaz.

'Have you read any of them?' I asked loudly, without moving from the
door.

'No,' he answered. 'But I have heard of them.'

'Really!' I said, keeping my tone free from irony. 'Well, I will not
bring you one of my books.'

'Why not?'

I looked hard at the door in front of me.

'For you I will be nothing but a woman,' I said.

And I fled down the stairs and past the concierge swiftly into the
street, as anxious as a thief to escape notice. I got a fiacre at once,
and drove away. I would not analyze my heart. I could not. I could but
savour the joy, sweet and fresh, that welled up in it as from some secret
source. I was so excited that I observed nothing outside myself, and when
the cab stopped in front of my hotel, it seemed to me that the journey
had occupied scarcely a few seconds. Do you imagine I was saddened by the
painful spectacle of Diaz' collapse in life? No! I only knew that he