THE woman and Quentin were left alone.

“If you don’t want me to stay here,” said Quentin—“tell me so.”

“Do you hate me so much for last night?” she said.

“I? No, Se?ora; but since this chamber is so narrow that one can scarcely move in it, you must let me know if I’m in your way.”

“No; you’re not in my way.”

Quentin seated himself upon a chair, took out his note book and pencil, and made up his mind to attempt one of the most disagreeable and difficult things in the world for him—making verses. Not by any chance did a consonance occur to him, nor did a single verse come out with the right number of feet, unless he counted them upon his fingers.

The good woman, with her crimped hair covered with little bow-knots, and her white wrapper, was contemplating the roof of the garret with desperate weariness.

Thus they remained for a long time. Suddenly the woman exclaimed in a choked voice:

“Se?or!”

“What is it, Se?ora?”

“I seem very ridiculous in your eyes, do I not?”

“No, Se?ora,—why?” asked Quentin, and mumbled[246] to himself: “nude, crude, stewed, conclude—No, they don’t seem to come very easily.”

“I am very unhappy, Se?or.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Se?ora?” and Quentin went on mumbling: “rude, gratitude, fortitude.... No, they do not come easily.”

“Will you listen to me, my good sir? At present you alone can advise me.”

“Speak, Se?ora, I am all ears,” answered Quentin, shutting his note book, and putting away his pencil.

The woman heaved a deep sigh, and began as follows:

“I, my good sir, am called Gumersinda Monleón. My father was a soldier, and I spent my childhood in Seville. I was an only child, and very much spoiled. My parents satisfied every caprice of mine that was within their means. It was ‘Sinda’ here, and ‘Sinda’ there—as they had abbreviated my name.... As I imagined myself at that time to be a somewhat exceptional person, and believed that I was out of my proper sphere in the modest home of my parents, I took up reading romantic novels, and I think I was by way of having my head turned by them.

“I lived with all the personages of my books; it seemed to me that all I had to do was to reach Paris and ask the first gendarme for Guillaboara, and he would immediately give me her address, or at least, that of her father, Prince Rudolf of Gerolstein.

“With my head full of mysteries, bandits, and black doctors, a suitor came to me—a rich young man who was owner of a fan-making establishment. I dismissed him several times, but he came back, and, with the influence of my parents, he succeeded in getting me to marry him. He was a saint, a veritable saint; I know[247] it now; but I considered him a commonplace person, incapable of lifting himself to higher spheres above the prosaic details of the store.

“After we had been married two years, he died, and I became a widow of some thirty-odd years and a considerable fortune; not to mention the fan-making establishment which I inherited from my husband. A young widow with money, and not at all bad looking, I had many suitors, from among whom I chose an army captain, because he wrote me such charming letters. Later I found out that he had copied them from a novel by Alfonso Karr that was appearing in the feuilleton of Las Novedades. Handsome, with a fine appearance, my second husband’s name was Miguel Estirado. But, my God, what a life he led me! Then I learned to realize what my poor Monleón had been to me.

“Estirado had a perfectly devilish humor. If we made a call upon any one, and the m............