will
walk miles and miles, under a scorching sun or a pouring rain, to have a
priest listen to her confession. I am in that mood this afternoon. I
feel as though I must tell everything. Even if I tried not to, I should
not succeed. There's a little demon inside me here urging me, compelling
me, to unveil all my past."

"Please feel quite free to do so. To be a confessor even, to deserve
your confidence, is some progress for me, at any rate."

"Progress? But why should you care to progress ... into my heart! My
heart is only an empty shell! Do you think you'd be getting much if you
got me? I'm absolutely, absolutely worthless! Don't laugh, please! I
mean it! Absolutely worthless. Here in this solitude I have been able to
study myself at leisure, see myself as I really am. I recognize it plain
as day: I am nothing, nothing. Good looking?... Well, yes; I confess I
am not what you'd call ugly. Even if, with a ridiculous false modesty, I
were to say I was, there's my past history to prove that plenty of men
have found me beautiful. But, alas, Rafaelito! That's only the outside,
my facade, so to speak. A few winter rains will wash the paint off and
show the mould that's underneath. Inside, believe me, Rafael, I am a
ruin. The walls are crumbling, the floors are giving way. I have burned
my life out in gaiety. I have singed my wings in a headlong rush into
the candle-flame of life. Do you know what I am? I am one of those old
hulks drawn up on the beach. From a distance their paint seems to have
all the color of their first voyages; but when you get closer you see
that all they ask for is to be let alone to grow old and crumble away on
the sand in peace. And you, who are setting out on your life voyage,
come gaily asking for a berth on a wreck that will go to the bottom as
soon as it strikes deep water, and carry you down with it!... Rafael, my
dear boy, don't be foolish. I am all right to have as a friend; but it's
too late for me to be anything more ... even if I were to love you. We
are of a different breed. I have been studying you, and I see that you
are a sensible, honest, plodding sort of fellow. Whereas I--I belong to
the butterflies, to the opposite of all you are. I am a conscript under
the banner of Bohemia, and I cannot desert the colors. Each of us on his
own road then. You'll easily find a woman to make you happy.... The
sillier she is, the better.... You were born to be a family man."

It occurred to Rafael t