"And who's the thief?"

"No one knows."

"Haven't they caught him?"

"No. He was too quick for them."

"And he got away?"

"Yes."

The mystery surrounding the criminal increased Alicia's uneasiness.

Still, it was an agreeable sensation, which caused her a certain vanity.

"Suppose the robbery really has been done for me!" she thought. She felt a proud, unhealthy emotion, like that of man when he meets his friends and they know some woman has killed herself for love of him.

Candelas, who could read Alicia's thoughts, exclaimed:

"Strange if the criminal were Enrique Darles!"

"I don't think it could be!"

"Well, now--it might."

"That would be a terribly bad thing for him to have done."

"Of course!"

"But if he really did do it, I don't care! Let the fool suffer for it.

Did _I_ tell him to? When you come right down to it, even if I had, what the devil? The one that does a thing is more to blame than the one that asks him to!"

The carriage stopped, and Alicia and Candelas got out. They made their way in under a poverty-stricken doorway. Candelas called:

"Janitress! Janitress!"

No answer.

"Follow me," said Alicia. "I know the way."

She started along, daintily holding up her pearl-hued petticoat and shaking the big plume of her hat with a graceful motion. They went through a damp, ugly yard, then another, and began to climb a high stairway. The silken frou-frou of their skirts and the tinkling of their bangled bracelets broke the stillness. They reached the fourth story, and stopped in front of a door that stood ajar. Alicia tapped with her knuckles. No one answered. She knocked again. A voice, the voice of Enrique, feebly answered from within:

"Come!"

The girls found themselves in a dark room that stank of blood. Alicia could not repress a coa.r.s.e exclamation of disgust.

"How sickening! Phew!" she cried. "What's this smell?"

At the end of the room, the silhouette of the bed was dimly visible.

From that bed, Enrique Darles stammered:

"There, on the little table--you'll find matches. Light--the lamp."

Candelas stood motionless, near the door, afraid of stumbling over something. When Alicia had made a light, the two friends cast a rapid glance about the room. The only furniture was a writing-table, a bureau with a looking-gla.s.s on it, and, along the walls, half a dozen rush-bottomed chairs. The student was lying, fully dressed, on the bed.

Against the whiteness of the pillow, his crisp and very black hair lay motionless. He opened his eyes, a moment, and then, very slowly, closed them again. Over his beardless face, saddened by the pallor of his lips, wandered the ethereal, luminous whiteness of the last agony.

The two girls drew near him. Alicia called:

"Enrique! Enrique!"

He half-opened his eyes. His dark pupils fixed their gaze on Little Goldie, in a look of grat.i.tude. She repeated:

"Enrique! Can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"They shot you, did they?"

"Yes."

"You--committed that--robbery in the Calle Mayor?"

"Yes."

Alicia looked exultingly at Candelas, as if asking her to take full cognizance of this exploit of hers. Her expression showed the same kind of pride that people sometimes manifest when they are exhibiting a work of art. She had just won a great triumph, because men dare such crimes only for women capable of inspiring mad love. Then the girl lowered her head again, to look more carefully at the student's clothing; and as she found it all stained with blood she felt a new attack of nausea. The contrast was too sharp between the hot, sickening air of that long-closed room and the life-giving breeze of the street.

"Shall I open the window?" asked she.

"No, no," murmured Enrique. "I'm very weak. The cold would kill me."

Alicia, seated on the bed--that poor bed one night perfumed with violets by her body--silently looked at him. A broad-brimmed crimson hat, decked with a splendid white plume, shaded her pale face. Her green eyes shone wickedly in the livid, bluish circles under them. The free-and-easy grace of her manner, the childish shortness of her waist, the robust fullness of her hips and breast, and the uneasiness with which her impatient, dancing little feet tapped the floor as if they wanted to run away, strongly contrasted with the ugliness of the room--the bare, half-furnished room heavy with the odors of death.

Candelas seemed truly moved. But Alicia felt as if she were choking. The terrible nausea kept gaining on her. Now and then she raised her lace handkerchief to her pleasure-loving nose--her nose which all the afternoon had breathed the free, fresh air of the race-track. Her growing disgust overcame her distress. She could not weep. And after all, why should she? Just so she could get away from there quickly, little cared she whether Enrique lived a few hours more or less. In her abysmal ingrat.i.tude, Alicia Pardo wondered that women could love a man so much as to kiss his dead lips.

Suddenly, anxious to have it all over, she asked:

"But--how did they wound you?"

Enrique opened his eyes again, and then his lips.

"I'll tell you," said he.

Despite the terrible bleeding he had suffered, some little strength still remained in him. This last, dying strength enabled him to speak.

"I stole for you, Alicia," he gasped, "because you told me, that evening you sent me away, I could see you again when I should bring you the necklace you wanted."

Alicia exclaimed:

"I don't remember that!"

"Well, I do! You told me so. I remember it all."