y back to you--I could not help it. Besides,"
he added, "you must realize what it costs me."

"Better had you spared yourself the humiliation, Don Felipe," she
answered.

"Listen, Chiquita, to what I have to say!"

"Spare yourself the pain, Don Felipe Ramirez. Nothing you can say can
alter my attitude toward you," she interrupted.

"You must hear what I have to say!" he cried passionately, without
heeding her impatience. "Ever since we parted, I have done nothing but
travel, travel, over the face of the earth, in the vain hope of
forgetting you. And if, during that time, I have committed excesses, it
was the love of you that drove me to it in order that I might efface you
from my memory forever. But, as you see, I cannot do it, and--I have
come back again." It was easy to read the agony in his heart, divine the
suffering which his humiliation caused him, and yet his words did not
move her; not an atom of pity did they arouse within her, knowing as she
did the arrogant, selfish being that he was.

"Chiquita, I love you still!" he burst forth.

"How dare you speak of love to me?" she cried. "Have you forgotten
Pepita Delaguerra, whom you ruined, for whose death you are responsible?
You laughed and went on your way; she was only a flower to be broken and
tossed aside. Well, I've not forgotten the day on which I found her
alone and deserted, nor the hour of her death."

"Chiquita," he interrupted, "if suffering can atone for that misdeed--"

"Ah! not so fast, Don Felipe Ramirez," she answered, cutting him short.
"Let us understand one another once and for all! She forgave you with
her dying breath, but as I knelt over her dead body, I vowed that if
ever you crossed my path and made advances to me that, as sure as
there's a God in heaven, I would encourage you, lead you on until you
were mad, and then fling you from me like the dog that you are in order
that you, too, might learn what it is to live without the one you
love!"

Had she spat in his face, she could not have aroused the tiger in him
more effectually.

"Chiquita!" he cried, gasping, his face livid with rage, "you're a
devil!"

"No, I'm only a woman who had the courage to avenge another woman's
wrong," she answered quietly. "Don't imagine that a wrong committed can
ever be atoned for. It may be condoned by the world, or even forgiven by
the one who was wronged, but that is all; the deed stands forever
written against one." She watched him as he paced