vice in this respect. He imagined that Pilar's tears were the
outcome of the same amount of pain as he must have felt to weep like
that, and every drop fell like molten lead upon his heart. His
resolutions melted like ice before the fire; he had not the courage to
wound this clinging, loving, sobbing creature. He rocked her gently in
his arms till, exhausted by her frightful excitement, she fell asleep.

The storm was averted for this time, but her confidence, her joyous
sense of security, was gone forever. The scene left her with a nervous
restlessness which gradually increased to morbid fear. She was haunted
by the idea, that Wilhelm had some plan for deserting her. She could
not get rid of the thought--it assumed the aspect of a possession. She
changed color as she did regularly two or three times in the course of
the morning--she opened the door of his room unexpectedly and did not
see him at the writing table, because, maybe, he had gone out on to the
balcony for a moment, to rest from his work and cool his heated brow.
Then she would search the house distractedly till she found him, and
breathed again. In the night, she would start up, and feel about her
hurriedly, to make sure that Wilhelm was there. She would not let him
go a step out of the house without her. She even accompanied him to the
National Library, and while he read or made notes, she sat beside him
apparently occupied with a book, but in reality never taking her eye
off him. She made no more visits except to the houses where she could
take Wilhelm with her. She had curious jealous fancies, examining, for
instance, with great care every letter that came for him, lest the
address should be in a feminine hand. Her desire to be forever proving
to herself that he was there, that he still belonged to her, took the
form of an insatiable craving for love, admitting, so to speak, of no
pauses for digestion. She was a beautiful, greedy werewolf, knowing
neither consideration nor restraint, her vampire mouth forever draining
the warm life-blood.

"She is crazy," said Anne to one of Queen Isabella's ladies who had
been calling on Pilar, and remarked afterward to the maid that she
found the countess strangely altered. Isabel, the cook with the red
nose and alcoholic, watery eyes, passed whole mornings with her
mistress laying the cards, till she forgot all about lunch. The father
confessor, too, became an ever more frequent guest in the house of his
fashionable