sixty times at least." Her voice was rising high. She was

struggling against laughter, but when I tried to put my hand over
her lips I felt her face wet with tears. She turned it this way

and that, eluding my hand with repressed low, little moans. I lost
my caution and said, "Be quiet," so sharply as to startle myself

(and her, too) into expectantstillness.
Ortega's voice in the hall asked distinctly" target="_blank" title="ad.清楚地，明晰地">distinctly: "Eh? What's this?"

and then he kept still on his side listening, but he must have
thought that his ears had deceived him. He was getting tired, too.

He was keeping quiet out there - resting. Presently he sighed
deeply; then in a harsh melancholy tone he started again.

"My love, my soul, my life, do speak to me. What am I that you
should take so much trouble to pretend that you aren't there? Do

speak to me," he repeated tremulously, following this mechanical
appeal with a string of extravagantly endearing names, some of them

quite childish, which all of a sudden stopped dead; and then after
a pause there came a distinct, unutterably weary: "What shall I do

now?" as though he were speaking to himself.
I shuddered to hear rising from the floor, by my side, a vibrating,

scornful: "Do! Why, slink off home looking over your shoulder as
you used to years ago when I had done with you - all but the

laughter."
"Rita," I murmured, appalled. He must have been struck dumb for a

moment. Then, goodness only knows why, in his dismay or rage he
was moved to speak in French with a most ridiculous accent.

"So you have found your tongue at last - CATIN! You were that from
the cradle. Don't you remember how . . ."

Dona Rita sprang to her feet at my side with a loud cry, "No,
George, no," which bewildered me completely. The suddenness, the

loudness of it made the ensuing silence on both sides of the door
perfectly awful. It seemed to me that if I didn't resist with all

my might something in me would die on the instant. In the
straight, falling folds of the night-dress she looked cold like a

block of marble; while I, too, was turned into stone by the
terrific clamour in the hall.

"Therese, Therese," yelled Ortega. "She has got a man in there."
He ran to the foot of the stairs and screamed again, "Therese,

Therese! There is a man with her. A man! Come down, you
miserable, starved peasant, come down and see."

I don't know where Therese was but I am sure that this voice
reached her, terrible, as if clamouring to heaven, and with a

shrill over-note which made me certain that if she was in bed the
only thing she would think of doing would be to put her head under

the bed-clothes. With a final yell: "Come down and see," he flew
back at the door of the room and started shaking it violently.

It was a double door, very tall, and there must have been a lot of
things loose about its fittings, bolts, latches, and all those

brass applications with broken screws, because it rattled, it
clattered, it jingled; and produced also the sound as of thunder

rolling in the big, empty hall. It was deafening, distressing, and
vaguely alarming as if it could bring the house down. At the same

time the futility of it had, it cannot be denied, a comic effect.
The very magnitude of the racket he raised was funny. But he

couldn't keep up that violentexertioncontinuously, and when he
stopped to rest we could hear him shouting to himself in vengeful

tones. He saw it all! He had been decoyed there! (Rattle,
rattle, rattle.) He had been decoyed into that town, he screamed,

getting more and more excited by the noise he made himself, in
order to be exposed to this! (Rattle, rattle.) By this shameless

CATIN! CATIN! CATIN!"
He started at the door again with superhuman vigour. Behind me I

heard Dona Rita laughing softly, statuesque, turned all dark in the
fading glow. I called out to her quite openly, "Do keep your self-

control." And she called back to me in a clear voice: "Oh, my
dear, will you ever consent to speak to me after all this? But

don't ask for the impossible. He was born to be laughed at."
"Yes," I cried. "But don't let yourself go."

I don't know whether Ortega heard us. He was exerting then his
utmost strength of lung against the infamous plot to expose him to

the derision of the fiendish associates of that obscene woman! . .
. Then he began another interlude upon the door, so sustained and

strong that I had the thought that this was growing absurdly
impossible, that either the plaster would begin to fall off the

ceiling or he would drop dead next moment, out there.
He stopped, uttered a few curses at the door, and seemed calmer

from sheer exhaustion.
"This story will be all over the world," we heard him begin.

"Deceived, decoyed, inveighed, in order to be made a laughing-stock
before the most debased of all mankind, that woman and her

associates." This was really a meditation. And then he screamed:
"I will kill you all." Once more he started worrying the door but

it was a startlingly feeble effort which he abandoned almost at
once. He must have been at the end of his strength. Dona Rita

from the middle of the room asked me recklessly loud: "Tell me!
Wasn't he born to be laughed at?" I didn't answer her. I was so

near the door that I thought I ought to hear him panting there. He
was terrifying, but he was not serious. He was at the end of his

strength, of his breath, of every kind of endurance, but I did not
know it. He was done up, finished; but perhaps he did not know it

himself. How still he was! Just as I began to wonder at it, I
heard him distinctly" target="_blank" title="ad.清楚地，明晰地">distinctly give a slap to his forehead. "I see it all!"

he cried. "That miserable, canting peasant-woman upstairs has
arranged it all. No doubt she consulted her priests. I must

regain my self-respect. Let her die first." I heard him make a
dash for the foot of the stairs. I was appalled; yet to think of

Therese being hoisted with her own petard was like a turn of
affairs in a farce. A very ferocious farce. Instinctively I

unlocked the door. Dona Rita's contralto laugh rang out loud,
bitter, and contemptuous; and I heard Ortega's distracted screaming

as if under torture. "It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!" I
hesitated just an instant, half a second, no more, but before I

could open the door wide there was in the hall a short groan and
the sound of a heavy fall.

The sight of Ortega lying on his back at the foot of the stairs
arrested me in the doorway. One of his legs was drawn up, the

other extended fully, his foot very near the pedestal of the silver
statuette holding the feeble and tenacious gleam which made the

shadows so heavy in that hall. One of his arms lay across his
breast. The other arm was extended full length on the white-and-

black pavement with the hand palm upwards and the fingers rigidly
spread out. The shadow of the lowest step slanted across his face

but one whisker and part of his chin could be made out. He
appeared strangely flattened. He didn't move at all. He was in

his shirt-sleeves. I felt an extreme distaste for that sight. The
characteristic sound of a key worrying in the lock stole into my

ears. I couldn't locate it but I didn't attend much to that at
first. I was engaged in watching Senor Ortega. But for his raised

leg he clung so flat to the floor and had taken on himself such a
distorted shape that he might have been the mere shadow of Senor

Ortega. It was rather fascinating to see him so quiet at the end
of all that fury, clamour, passion, and uproar. Surely there was

never anything so still in the world as this Ortega. I had a
bizarre notion that he was not to be disturbed.

A noise like the rattling of chain links, a small grind and click
exploded in the stillness of the hall and a eciov began to swear in

Italian. These surprising sounds were quite welcome, they recalled
me to myself, and I perceived they came from the front door which

seemed pushed a little ajar. Was somebody trying to get in? I had
no objection, I went to the door and said: "Wait a moment, it's on

the chain." The deep voice on the other side said: "What an
extraordinary thing," and I assented mentally. It was

extraordinary. The chain was never put up, but Therese was a
thorough sort of person, and on this night she had put it up to