handkerchief. She looked like a pilgrim to a saint's shrine. Rose

took her to the house. She asked when she saw it: 'And does this
big place really belong to our Rita?' My maid of course said that

it was mine. 'And how long did our Rita live here?' - 'Madame has
never seen it unless perhaps the outside, as far as I know. I

believe Mr. Allegre lived here for some time when he was a young
man.' - 'The sinner that's dead?' - 'Just so,' says Rose. You know

nothing ever startles Rose. 'Well, his sins are gone with him,'
said my sister, and began to make herself at home.

"Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day
she was back with me with the remark that Mlle. Therese knew her

way about very well already and preferred to be left to herself.
Some little time afterwards I went to see that sister of mine. The

first thing she said to me, 'I wouldn't have recognized you, Rita,'
and I said, 'What a funny dress you have, Therese, more fit for the

portress of a convent than for this house.' - 'Yes,' she said, 'and
unless you give this house to me, Rita, I will go back to our

country. I will have nothing to do with your life, Rita. Your
life is no secret for me.'

"I was going from room to room and Therese was following me. 'I
don't know that my life is a secret to anybody,' I said to her,

'but how do you know anything about it?' And then she told me that
it was through a cousin of ours, that horridwretch of a boy, you

know. He had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish
commercial house of some kind, in Paris, and apparently had made it

his business to write home whatever he could hear about me or
ferret out from those relations of mine with whom I lived as a

girl. I got suddenly very furious. I raged up and down the room
(we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me as far

as the door. I heard her say to herself, 'It's the evil spirit in
her that makes her like this.' She was absolutely convinced of

that. She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect
herself. I was quite astounded. And then I really couldn't help

myself. I burst into a laugh. I laughed and laughed; I really
couldn't stop till Therese ran away. I went downstairs still

laughing and found her in the hall with her face to the wall and
her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner. I had to pull her

out by the shoulders from there. I don't think she was frightened;
she was only shocked. But I don't suppose her heart is desperately

bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired she
came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist and

entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of
saints and priests. Quite a little programme for a reformed

sinner. I got away at last. I left her sunk on her heels before
the empty chair looking after me. 'I pray for you every night and

morning, Rita,' she said. - 'Oh, yes. I know you are a good
sister,' I said to her. I was letting myself out when she called

after me, 'And what about this house, Rita?' I said to her, 'Oh,
you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.' The

last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with
her mouth open. I have seen her since several times, but our

intercourse is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with
some great lady. But I believe she really knows how to make men

comfortable. Upon my word I think she likes to look after men.
They don't seem to be such great sinners as women are. I think you

could do worse than take up your quarters at number 10. She will
no doubt develop a saintly sort of affection for you, too."

I don't know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Dona
Rita's peasant sister was very fascinating to me. If I went to

live very willingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected
with Dona Rita had for me a peculiarfascination. She had only

passed through the house once as far as I knew; but it was enough.
She was one of those beings that leave a trace. I am not

unreasonable - I mean for those that knew her. That is, I suppose,
because she was so unforgettable. Let us remember the tragedy of

Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculousfinancier with a criminal
soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears. No wonder, then,

that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity with being
much finer than that grotesqueinternational intriguer, the mere

knowledge that Dona Rita had passed through the very rooms in which
I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-

expeditions, was enough to fill my inner being with a great
content. Her glance, her darklybrilliant blue glance, had run

over the walls of that room which most likely would be mine to
slumber in. Behind me, somewhere near the door, Therese, the

peasant sister, said in a funnily compassionate tone and in an
amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false

persuasiveness:
"You will be very comfortable here, Senor. It is so peaceful here

in the street. Sometimes one may think oneself in a village. It's
only a hundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King.

And I shall take such good care of you that your very heart will be
able to rest."

CHAPTER II
Dona Rita was curious to know how I got on with her peasant sister

and all I could say in return for that inquiry was that the peasant
sister was in her own way amiable. At this she clicked her tongue

amusingly and repeated a remark she had made before: "She likes
young men. The younger the better." The mere thought of those two

women being sisters aroused one's wonder. Physically they were
altogether of different design. It was also the difference between

living tissue of glowing loveliness with a divinebreath, and a
hard hollow figure of baked clay.

Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful
enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware. The only gleam perhaps

that one could find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to
get between her dull lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little

inexplicably, because it was never associated with a smile. She
smiled with compressed mouth. It was indeed difficult to conceive

of those two birds coming from the same nest. And yet . . .
Contrary to what generally happens, it was when one saw those two

women together that one lost all belief in the possibility of their
relationship near or far. It extended even to their common

humanity. One, as it were, doubted it. If one of the two was
representative, then the other was either something more or less

than human. One wondered whether these two women belonged to the
same scheme of creation. One was secretly amazed to see them

standing together, speaking to each other, having words in common,
understanding each other. And yet! . . . Our psychological sense

is the crudest of all; we don't know, we don't perceive how
superficial we are. The simplest shades escape us, the secret of

changes, of relations. No, upon the whole, the only feature (and
yet with enormous differences) which Therese had in common with her

sister, as I told Dona Rita, was amiability.
"For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself," I went on.

"It's one of your characteristics, of course much more precious
than in other people. You transmute the commonest traits into gold

of your own; but after all there are no new names. You are
amiable. You were most amiable to me when I first saw you."

"Really. I was not aware. Not specially . . . "
"I had never the presumption to think that it was special.

Moreover, my head was in a whirl. I was lost in astonishment first
of all at what I had been listening to all night. Your history,

you know, a wonderful tale with a flavour of wine in it and
wreathed in clouds, with that amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy

of a woman lurking in a corner, and with Blunt's smile gleaming
through a fog, the fog in my eyes, from Mills' pipe, you know. I

was feeling quite inanimate as to body and frightfully stimulated
as to mind all the time. I had never heard anything like that talk

about you before. Of course I wasn't sleepy, but still I am not
used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt . . ."

"Kept awake all night listening to my story!" She marvelled.
"Yes. You don't think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn't have