ng him
into the carriage embarrassed him. At last he ventured, timidly, also
avoiding the intimate _tu_!

"Imagine our meeting here! What a surprise!"

"I got in yesterday; tomorrow I leave for Lisbon. A short stop, isn't
it! Just time for a word with the director of the _Real_; perhaps I'll
come next winter to sing _Die Walkuere_ here. But let's talk about you,
illustrious orator.... But I may say _tu_ to you, mayn't I?" she
corrected--"for I believe we are still friends."

"Yes, friends, Leonora.... I have never been able to forget you."

But the feeling he put into the words vanished before the cold smile
with which she answered.

"Friends; that's it," she said, slowly. "Friends, and nothing more.
Between us there lies a corpse that prevents us from getting very close
to each other again."

"A corpse?" asked Rafael, not catching her meaning.

"Yes; the love you murdered.... Friends, nothing more; comrades united
by complicity in a crime."

And she laughed with cruel sarcasm, while the carriage turned into one
of the avenues of Recoletos. Leonora looked vacantly out upon the
central boulevard. The rows of iron benches were filled with people.
Groups of children in charge of governesses were playing gaily about in
the soft, golden splendor of the afternoon.

"I read in the papers this morning that don Rafael Brull, 'of the
Finance Commission,' if you please, would undertake to speak for the
Ministry on the matter of the budget; so I got down on my knees to an
old friend of mine, the secretary of the English embassy, and begged him
to come and take me to the session. This coach is his.... Poor fellow!
He doesn't know you, but the moment he saw you stand up to speak, he
took to his heels.... He missed something though; for really, you
weren't half bad. I'm quite impressed. Say, Rafael, where do you dig up
all those things?"

But Rafael looked uneasily at her cruel smile and refused to accept her
praise. Besides, what did he care about his speech? It seemed to him
that he had been for years and years in that coach; that a whole
lifetime had gone by since he left the halls of the Congress. His gaze
was fixed on her in admiration, and his astonished eyes were drinking in
the beauty of her face, and of her figure.

"How beautiful you are!" he murmured in impulsive enchantment. "The same
as you were then. It seems impossible that eight years can have flown
by."

"Yes; I admit that I bear up well. Time seems no