r kind heart, of your generous nature which, even on
such an occasion as this, cannot be forsworn. This favor, though
insignificant in the world's eyes and before your conscience, would be
in mine immense; it would be a secret between us two until death.... My
gratitude for it would be eternal.... Come, lovely Maximina, don't give
the lie to your goodness.... I beg it of you on my knees. Let me touch
my lips to your hand, and go away calm and happy.... Do you wish greater
humiliation than this?"

The audacious and astute _caballero_, in saying these last words, in
reality bent his knee, and seized one of the young woman's hands. But
she snatched it away with surprising bravery, and glanced around with a
face full of terror, as though seeking for aid. Then she went like a
flash to Miguel's study. Don Alfonso followed her, likewise running. The
young woman took her stand behind the table, and once more cast upon him
that timid and uncertain glance, in reality like that of one insane.

Miguel had left open on the table his shaving case, and the razor that
he had used lay on top, also open.

By a refinement of affection Maximina had been unwilling to touch these
objects or to allow any one else to do so, but left them till his
return. She quickly seized the razor, and laying it to her throat, she
said in a hoarse voice:--

"If you touch me again, I will kill myself! I will kill myself!"

These were the first words that she spoke during the whole scene, though
it lasted several minutes.

The tone in which she spoke and the look with which she accompanied her
words, left no room for doubt. Saavedra knew that though she would not
kill herself, yet that she would give herself a slash, that the blood
would run, and that there would be a serious piece of mischief in which
he would appear in no enviable light. Therefore he hastened to say:--

"I will not touch you; don't be afraid." And then he added with an
ironical smile, in a tone overflowing with spite, "Come, come! where it
is least to be expected there arises a Lucretia. If I were an artist,
Maximina, I would paint you this way with your arm raised, and would
send you to the exhibition. The razor is a trifle prosaic, but that is
the fault of the times. Lucretias nowadays, instead of an embossed
dagger use their husbands' razor!"

Perhaps the rejected seducer would have gone on flinging at his expected
victim other coarse insults and cowardly jests like the above, but