are always frightened in the end," she went on. She
lifted her forefinger like one who teaches a little child. "You see,
with us, we guess. We guess at what comes after. We are sure--certain
and very sure--that we, at least, deserve to suffer. And that is why
I have lived under my confessor for ten lifetimes. You gee!"

O'Neill nodded. It was not hard to understand that the splendid
animal in the Senora could never conceive the idea, of its utter
extinction. Death--to Lola and her kind--is not the end, it is the
beginning of bondage.

There was another interval of silence while she twisted her fingers
in her lap.

"Ah," she said. "I know. He will be beautiful in his bed, dying like
an abbot. He is frightened--yes. But he thinks himself safe from me.
He imagines me sour, decorous, with a skinny neck. Because he thinks
me all but a nun, he will be all but a priest. We shall see, Senor
O'Neill. We shall see!"

Soon after that she left him to retire to the compartment in which
her maid traveled alone.

"We arrive at eight, do we not?" she asked him. "Then I must make my
toilet." She smiled down on him as she spoke, and gave him a little
significant nod.

The train was already running into the station when she returned.
O'Neill, nervous and apprehensive, gave her a quick glance. She was
covered in a long cloak of black silk that hid her figure entirely;
the hood of it rose over her hair and made a frame to her face. Under
the hood he could distinguish the soft brightness of a red rose stuck
ever one ear.

"Senora," he said, "I take the liberty to remind you that we are
going to the bedside of a dying man."

She turned on him with slow scorn. "Yes," she replied. "It is, as
you say, a liberty."

The long robe rose and fell over her breast with her breathing; her
eyes traveled over him from head to feet and back again deliberately.

O'Neill took his temper into custody. "Still," he urged, "if you have
it in mind to compass any surprising effect, remember--it may be his
death."

She laughed slowly. "What is a death?" she answered. And then, with
a hissing vehemence: "He sent for me, and I am here. Should I wear a
veil, then--Lola?"

He put further remonstrances by, with a feeling of sickness in the
throat. Again realization surged upon him that he had no words with
which to speak to people like this. They lived on another plane, and
saw by other lights. He was like a child wandering on a field of
battle.

He