she persisted in running alone because she couldn't make up her
mind to part with a few francs every month to a servant. It seemed

to me that I was no longer such a favourite with her as I used to
be. That, strange to say, was exasperating, too. It was as if

some idea, some fruitful notion had killed in her all the softer
and more humane emotions. She went about with brooms and dusters

wearing an air of sanctimonious thoughtfulness.
The man who to a certain extent took my place in Therese's favour

was the old father of the dancing girls inhabiting the ground
floor. In a tall hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he

allowed himself to be button-holed in the hall by Therese who would
talk to him interminably with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely

down at her, and meanwhile tried to edge towards the front door. I
imagine he didn't put a great value on Therese's favour. Our stay

in harbour was prolonged this time and I kept indoors like an
invalid. One evening I asked that old man to come in and drink and

smoke with me in the studio. He made no difficulties to accept,
brought his wooden pipe with him, and was very entertaining in a

pleasant voice. One couldn't tell whether he was an uncommon
person or simply a ruffian, but in any case with his white beard he

looked quite venerable. Naturally he couldn't give me much of his
company as he had to look closely after his girls and their

admirers; not that the girls were unduly frivolous, but of course
being very young they had no experience. They were friendly

creatures with pleasant, merry voices and he was very much devoted
to them. He was a muscular man with a high colour and silvery

locks curling round his bald pate and over his ears, like a barocco
apostle. I had an idea that he had had a lurid past and had seen

some fighting in his youth. The admirers of the two girls stood in
great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his behaviour to

them was friendly and even somewhat obsequious, yet always with a
certain truculent glint in his eye that made them pause in

everything but their generosity - which was encouraged. I
sometimes wondered whether those two careless, merry hard-working

creatures understood the secret moral beauty of the situation.
My real company was the dummy in the studio and I can't say it was

exactly satisfying. After taking possession of the studio I had
raised it tenderly, dusted its mangled limbs and insensible, hard-

wood bosom, and then had propped it up in a corner where it seemed
to take on, of itself, a shy attitude. I knew its history. It was

not an ordinary dummy. One day, talking with Dona Rita about her
sister, I had told her that I thought Therese used to knock it down

on purpose with a broom, and Dona Rita had laughed very much.
This, she had said, was an instance of dislike from mere instinct.

That dummy had been made to measure years before. It had to wear
for days and days the Imperial Byzantine robes in which Dona Rita

sat only once or twice herself; but of course the folds and bends
of the stuff had to be preserved as in the first sketch. Dona Rita

described amusingly how she had to stand in the middle of her room
while Rose walked around her with a tape measure noting the figures

down on a small piece of paper which was then sent to the maker,
who presently returned it with an angry letter stating that those

proportions were altogether impossible in any woman. Apparently
Rose had muddled them all up; and it was a long time before the

figure was finished and sent to the Pavilion in a long basket to
take on itself the robes and the hieratic pose of the Empress.

Later, it wore with the same patience the marvellous hat of the
"Girl in the Hat." But Dona Rita couldn't understand how the poor

thing ever found its way to Marseilles minus its turnip head.
Probably it came down with the robes and a quantity of precious

brocades which she herself had sent down from Paris. The knowledge
of its origin, the contempt of Captain Blunt's references to it,

with Therese's shocked dislike of the dummy, invested that summary
reproduction with a sort of charm, gave me a faint and miserable

illusion of the original, less artificial than a photograph, less
precise, too. . . . But it can't be explained. I felt positively

friendly to it as if it had been Rita's trusted personal attendant.
I even went so far as to discover that it had a sort of grace of

its own. But I never went so far as to address set speeches to it
where it lurked shyly in its corner, or drag it out from there for

contemplation. I left it in peace. I wasn't mad. I was only
convinced that I soon would be.

CHAPTER II
Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few people on account

of all these Royalist affairs which I couldn't very well drop, and
in truth did not wish to drop. They were my excuse for remaining

in Europe, which somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave
for the West Indies, or elsewhere. On the other hand, my

adventurous pursuit kept me in contact with the sea where I found
occupation, protection, consolation, the mentalrelief of grappling

with concrete problems, the sanity one acquires from close contact
with simple mankind, a little self-confidence born from the

dealings with the elemental powers of nature. I couldn't give all
that up. And besides all this was related to Dona Rita. I had, as

it were, received it all from her own hand, from that hand the
clasp of which was as frank as a man's and yet conveyed a unique

sensation. The very memory of it would go through me like a wave
of heat. It was over that hand that we first got into the habit of

quarrelling, with the irritability of sufferers from some obscure
pain and yet half unconscious of their disease. Rita's own spirit

hovered over the troubled waters of Legitimity. But as to the
sound of the four magic letters of her name I was not very likely

to hear it fall sweetly on my ear. For instance, the distinguished
personality in the world of finance with whom I had to confer

several times, alluded to the irresistible seduction of the power
which reigned over my heart and my mind; which had a mysterious and

unforgettable face, the brilliance of sunshine together with the
unfathomable splendour of the night as - Madame de Lastaola.

That's how that steel-grey man called the greatest mystery of the
universe. When uttering that assumed name he would make for

himself a guardedly solemn and reserved face as though he were
afraid lest I should presume to smile, lest he himself should

venture to smile, and the sacredformality of our relations should
be outraged beyond mending.

He would refer in a studiously grave tone to Madame de Lastaola's
wishes, plans, activities, instructions, movements; or picking up a

letter from the usual litter of paper found on such men's desks,
glance at it to refresh his memory; and, while the very sight of

the handwriting would make my lips go dry, would ask me in a
bloodless voice whether perchance I had "a direct communication

from - er - Paris lately." And there would be other maddening
circumstances connected with those visits. He would treat me as a

serious person having a clear view of certain eventualities, while
at the very moment my vision could see nothing but streaming across

the wall at his back, abundant and misty, unearthly and adorable, a
mass of tawny hair that seemed to have hot sparks tangled in it.

Another nuisance was the atmosphere of Royalism, of Legitimacy,
that pervaded the room, thin as air, intangible, as though no

Legitimist of flesh and blood had ever existed to the man's mind
except perhaps myself. He, of course, was just simply a banker, a

very distinguished, a very influential, and a very impeccable
banker. He persisted also in deferring to my judgment and sense

with an over-emphasis called out by his perpetual surprise at my
youth. Though he had seen me many times (I even knew his wife) he

could never get over my immature age. He himself was born about
fifty years old, all complete, with his iron-grey whiskers and his

bilious eyes, which he had the habit of frequently closing during a
conversation. On one occasion he said to me. "By the by, the

Marquis of Villarel is here for a time. He inquired after you the
last time he called on me. May I let him know that you are in

town?"
I didn't say anything to that. The Marquis of Villarel was the Don

Rafael of Rita's own story. What had I to do with Spanish
grandees? And for that matter what had she, the woman of all time,

to do with all the villainous or splendid disguises human dust
takes upon itself? All this was in the past, and I was acutely

aware that for me there was no present, no future, nothing but a
hollow pain, a vain passion of such magnitude that being locked up