sake, reflect, Senorita.' And he waited before he asked me again, 'Shall
I surrender it to him?' I felt death upon my heart, and all my fear for
you--there." She touched her beautiful throat with a swift movement of
a hand that disappeared at once under the lace. "And because I could
not speak, I------Don Juan, you have just offered me your life--I------
_Misericordia!_ What else was possible? I made with my head the sign
'Yes.'"

In the stress, hurry, and rapture encompassing my immense gratitude,
I pressed her hand to my side familiarly, as if we had been two lovers
walking in a lane on a serene evening.

"If you had not made that sign, it would have been worse than death--in
my heart," I said. "He had allied me, too, to renounce my trust, my
light."

We walked on slowly, accompanied in our sudden silence by the plash of
the fountain at the bottom of the great square of darkness on our left,
and by the piteous moans of La Chica.

"That is what he meant," said the enchanting voice by my side. "And you
refused. That is your valour."

"From no selfish motives," I said, troubled, as if all the great
incertitude of my mind had been awakened by the sound that brought so
much delight to my heart. "My valour is nothing."

"It has given me a new courage," she said.

"You did not want more," I said earnestly.

"Ah! I was very much alone. It is difficult to------"

She hesitated.

"To live alone," I finished.

"More so to die," she whispered, with a new note of timidity. "It is
frightful. Be cautious, Don Juan, for the love of God, because I could
not------"

We stopped. La Chica, silent, as if exhausted, drooped lamentably,
with her shoulder against the wall, by Seraphina's door; and the pure
crystalline sound of the fountain below, enveloping the parting pause,
seemed to wind its coldness round my heart.

"Poor Don Carlos!" she said. "I had a great affection for him. I was
afraid they would want me to marry him. He loved your sister."

"He never told her," I murmured. "I wonder if she ever guessed."

"He was poor, homeless, ill already, in a foreign land."

"We all loved him at home," I said.

"He never asked her," she breathed out. "And, perhaps--but he never
asked her."

"I have no more force," sighed La Chica, suddenly, and sank down at the
foot of the wall, putting the candlesticks on the floor.

"You have been very good to him," I said; "only he need not have
demanded this from you. Of course, I