lofty sometimes and sometimes abject. When it paused it left us looking profoundly at each other.
"It's almost comic," I whispered.
"Yes. One could laugh," she assented, with a sort of sinister conviction. Never had I seen her look exactly like that, for an instant another, an incredible Rita! "Haven't I laughed at him innumerable times?" she added in a sombre whisper.
He was muttering to himself out there, and unexpectedly shouted: "What?" as though he had fancied he had heard something. He waited a while before he started up again with a loud: "Speak up, Queen of the goats, with your goat tricks. . ." All was still for a time, then came a most awful bang on the door. He must have stepped back a pace to hurl himself bodily against the panels. The whole house seemed to shake. He repeated that performance once more, and then varied it by a prolonged drumming with his fists. It WAS comic. But I felt myself struggling mentally with an invading gloom as though I were no longer sure of myself.
"Take me out," whispered Dona Rita feverishly, "take me out of this house before it is too late."
"You will have to stand it," I answered.
"So be it; but then you must go away yourself. Go now, before it is too late."
I didn't condescend to answer this. The drumming on the panels stopped and the absurd thunder of it died out in the house. I don't know why precisely then I had the acute vision of the red mouth of Jose Ortega wriggling with rage between his funny whiskers. He began afresh but in a tired tone:
"Do you expect a fellow to forget your tricks, you
