y instant that you
turned your eyes away.... I only permitted myself to approach coldly
and ironically when it was impossible to avoid meeting you.... And
afterwards, in the doctor's house, I used to talk about you, every
instant, laughing with her over these romantic gallantries."

Ferragut was listening gloomily, but with growing concentration. He
foresaw the explanation of many hitherto incomprehensible acts. A
curtain was going to be withdrawn from the past showing everything
behind it in a new light.

"The doctor would laugh, but in spite of my jesting she would assure me
just the same: 'You are in love with this man; this Don Jose interests
you. Be careful, Carmen!' And the queer thing was that she did not take
amiss my infatuation, especially when you consider that she was the
enemy of every passion that could not be made directly subservient to
our work.... She told the truth; I was in love. I recognized it the
morning the overwhelming desire to go to the Aquarium took possession
of me. I had passed many days without seeing you: I was living outside
of the hotel in the doctor's house in order not to encounter my
inamorato. And that morning I got up very sad, with one fixed thought:
'Poor captain!... Let us give him a little happiness.' I was sick that
day.... Sick because of you! Now I understood it all. We saw each other
in the Aquarium and it was I who kissed you at the same time that I was
longing for the extermination of all men.... Of all men except you!"

She made a brief pause, raising her eyes toward him, in order to take
in the effect of her words.

"You remember our luncheon in the restaurant of Vomero; you remember
how I begged you to go away, leaving me to my fate. I had a foreboding
of the future. I foresaw that it was going to be fatal for you. How
could I join a direct and frank life like yours to my existence as an
adventuress, mixed up in so many unconfessable compromises?... But I
was in love with you. I wished to save you by leaving you, and at the
same time I was afraid of not seeing you again. The night that you
irritated me with the fury of your desires and I stupidly defended
myself, as though it were an outrage, concentrating on your person the
hatred which all men inspire in me,--that night, alone in my bed, I
wept. I wept at the thought that I had lost you forever and at the same
time I felt satisfied with myself because thus I was freeing you from
my baleful influence.... Then von