indecision.

"You've given me a scare that I'll never forgive you for," she said at
last. "What are you doing here?..."

Rafael was at a loss for a reply. He stammered with an embarrassment
that quite impressed Leonora; but despite his agitation, he noticed a
strange glitter in the girl's eyes, and a mysterious veiling of her
voice that seemed to transfigure her.

"Come, now," said Leonora gently, "don't hunt up any far-fetched
excuses.... You were coming to bid me good-bye--and without trying to
see me! What a lot of nonsense! Why don't you say right out that you
are a victim of this dangerous night--as I am, too?"

And her eyes, glittering with a tearful gleam, swept the _plazoleta_,
which lay white in the moonlight; and the snowy orange-blossoms, the
rose-bushes, the palm-trees, that stood out black against the blue sky
where the stars were twinkling like grains of luminous sand. Her voice
trembled with a soft huskiness, as caressing as velvet.

Rafael, quite encouraged by this unexpected reception, tried to beg
forgiveness for the madness that had caused his expulsion from the
place; but the actress cut him short.

"Let's not discuss that unpleasant thing! It hurts me just to think of
it. You're forgiven; and since you've fallen on this spot as though
heaven had dropped you here, you may stay a moment. But ... no
liberties. You know me now."

And straightening up to her full height as an Amazon sure of herself,
she turned to the bench, motioning to Rafael to take a seat at the other
end.

"What a night!... I feel a strange intoxication without wine! The
orange-trees seem to inebriate me with their very breath. An hour ago my
room was whirling round and round, as though I were going to faint. My
bed was like a frail bark tossing in a tempest. So I came down as I
often do; and here you can have me until sleep proves more powerful than
the beauty of this beautiful night."

She spoke with a languid abandonment; her voice quivering, and tremors
rippling across her shoulders, as if all the perfume were hurting her,
oppressing her powerful vitality. Rafael sat looking at her over the
length of the bench--a white, sepulchral figure, wrapped in the hooded
cape of a dressing-gown--the first thing she had laid hands upon when
she had thought of going out into the garden.

"I was frightened when I saw you," she continued, in a slow, faint
voice. "A little fright, nothing more! A natural surprise, I suppose;
and yet