talking about the beginning. I have heard that some dealers in
fine objects, quite mercenary people of course (my mother has an

experience in that world), show sometimes an astonishing reluctance
to part with some specimens, even at a good price. It must be very

funny. It's just possible that the uncle and the aunt have been
rolling in tears on the floor, amongst their oranges, or beating

their heads against the walls from rage and despair. But I doubt
it. And in any case Allegre is not the sort of person that gets

into any vulgar trouble. And it's just possible that those people
stood open-mouthed at all that magnificence. They weren't poor,

you know; therefore it wasn't incumbent on them to be honest. They
are still there in the old respectablewarehouse, I understand.

They have kept their position in their quartier, I believe. But
they didn't keep their niece. It might have been an act of

sacrifice! For I seem to remember hearing that after attending for
a while some school round the corner the child had been set to keep

the books of that orange business. However it might have been, the
first fact in Rita's and Allegre's common history is a journey to

Italy, and then to Corsica. You know Allegre had a house in
Corsica somewhere. She has it now as she has everything he ever

had; and that Corsican palace is the portion that will stick the
longest to Dona Rita, I imagine. Who would want to buy a place

like that? I suppose nobody would take it for a gift. The fellow
was having houses built all over the place. This very house where

we are sitting belonged to him. Dona Rita has given it to her
sister, I understand. Or at any rate the sister runs it. She is

my landlady . . ."
"Her sister here!" I exclaimed. "Her sister!"

Blunt turned to me politely, but only for a long mute gaze. His
eyes were in deep shadow and it struck me for the first time then

that there was something fatal in that man's aspect as soon as he
fell silent. I think the effect was purelyphysical, but in

consequence whatever he said seemed inadequate and as if produced
by a commonplace, if uneasy, soul.

"Dona Rita brought her down from her mountains on purpose. She is
asleep somewhere in this house, in one of the vacant rooms. She

lets them, you know, at extortionate prices, that is, if people
will pay them, for she is easily intimidated. You see, she has

never seen such an enormous town before in her life, nor yet so
many strange people. She has been keeping house for the uncle-

priest in some mountain gorge for years and years. It's
extraordinary he should have let her go. There is something

mysterious there, some reason or other. It's either theology or
Family. The saintly uncle in his wild parish would know nothing of

any other reasons. She wears a rosary at her waist. Directly she
had seen some real money she developed a love of it. If you stay

with me long enough, and I hope you will (I really can't sleep),
you will see her going out to mass at half-past six; but there is

nothing remarkable in her; just a peasant woman of thirty-four or
so. A rustic nun. . . ."

I may as well say at once that we didn't stay as long as that. It
was not that morning that I saw for the first time Therese of the

whispering lips and downcast eyes slipping out to an early mass
from the house of iniquity into the early winter murk of the city

of perdition, in a world steeped in sin. No. It was not on that
morning that I saw Dona Rita's incredible sister with her brown,

dry face, her gliding motion, and her really nun-like dress, with a
black handkerchief enfolding her head tightly, with the two pointed

ends hanging down her back. Yes, nun-like enough. And yet not
altogether. People would have turned round after her if those

dartings out to the half-past six mass hadn't been the only
occasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. She was

frightened of the streets, but in a particular way, not as if of a
danger but as if of a contamination. Yet she didn't fly back to

her mountains because at bottom she had an indomitablecharacter, a
peasant tenacity of purpose, predatory instincts. . . .

No, we didn't remain long enough with Mr. Blunt to see even as much
as her back glide out of the house on her prayerful errand. She

was prayerful. She was terrible. Her one-idead peasant mind was
as inaccessible as a closed iron safe. She was fatal. . . It's

perfectly ridiculous to confess that they all seem fatal to me now;
but writing to you like this in all sincerity I don't mind

appearing ridiculous. I suppose fatality must be expressed,
embodied, like other forces of this earth; and if so why not in

such people as well as in other more glorious or more frightful
figures?

We remained, however, long enough to let Mr. Blunt's half-hidden
acrimony develop itself or prey on itself in further talk about the

man Allegre and the girl Rita. Mr. Blunt, still addressing Mills
with that story, passed on to what he called the second act, the

disclosure, with, what he called, the characteristic Allegre
impudence - which surpassed the impudence of kings, millionaires,

or tramps, by many degrees - the revelation of Rita's existence to
the world at large. It wasn't a very large world, but then it was

most choicely composed. How is one to describe it shortly? In a
sentence it was the world that rides in the morning in the Bois.

In something less than a year and a half from the time he found her
sitting on a broken fragment of stone work buried in the grass of

his wild garden, full of thrushes, starlings, and other innocent
creatures of the air, he had given her amongst other

accomplishments the art of sitting admirably on a horse, and
directly they returned to Paris he took her out with him for their

first morning ride.
"I leave you to judge of the sensation," continued Mr. Blunt, with

a faint grimace, as though the words had an acrid taste in his
mouth. "And the consternation," he added venomously. "Many of

those men on that great morning had some one of their womankind
with them. But their hats had to go off all the same, especially

the hats of the fellows who were under some sort of obligation to
Allegre. You would be astonished to hear the names of people, of

real personalities in the world, who, not to mince matters, owed
money to Allegre. And I don't mean in the world of art only. In

the first rout of the surprise some story of an adopted daughter
was set abroadhastily, I believe. You know 'adopted' with a

peculiar accent on the word - and it was plausible enough. I have
been told that at that time she looked extremelyyouthful by his

side, I mean extremelyyouthful in expression, in the eyes, in the
smile. She must have been . . ."

Blunt pulled himself up short, but not so short as not to let the
confused murmur of the word "adorable" reach our attentive ears.

The heavy Mills made a slight movement in his chair. The effect on
me was more inward, a strange emotion which left me perfectly

still; and for the moment of silence Blunt looked more fatal than
ever.

"I understand it didn't last very long," he addressed us politely
again. "And no wonder! The sort of talk she would have heard

during that first springtime in Paris would have put an impress on
a much less receptive personality; for of course Allegre didn't

close his doors to his friends and this new apparition was not of
the sort to make them keep away. After that first morning she

always had somebody to ride at her bridle hand. Old Doyen, the
sculptor, was the first to approach them. At that age a man may

venture on anything. He rides a strange animal like a circus
horse. Rita had spotted him out of the corner of her eye as he

passed them, putting up his enormous paw in a still more enormous
glove, airily, you know, like this" (Blunt waved his hand above his

head), "to Allegre. He passes on. All at once he wheels his
fantastic animal round and comes trotting after them. With the

merest casual 'Bonjour, Allegre' he ranges close to her on the
other side and addresses her, hat in hand, in that booming voice of

his like a deferential roar of the sea very far away. His
articulation is not good, and the first words she really made out