Saavedra shut the door, and offered her his hand with perfect ease and self-possession.
She could scarcely articulate her answer. Her hand trembled violently.
"What does this mean? You are trembling," said the _caballero_, retaining it a moment in his.
"If it were an enemy who came in, I should understand this agitation; but as I am such a devoted friend ... so stupidly devoted as I am to you.... I am wrong to call myself a friend: I should do better to call myself your slave, for these many days you have exercised an absolute dominion over me."
The young wife's features were contracted by a smile which seemed rather like a face of terror. Her eyes expressed the same dismay. She tried to say something, but her voice died in her throat.
"The last time that I spoke with you, Maximina," the Andalusian went on to say, after he had taken a seat at her side, "I was bold enough to give you a hint of what was passing within my heart. Perhaps I was foolish; but the step has been taken, and I cannot retrace it. I must complete to-day what then I did not do more than indicate; I must express to you,--although it is very difficult--the love, the idolatry that you inspire in me, the terrible anxieties which I have been suffering for more than a month, the state of genuine madness to which your cruelty has brought me...."
Maximina continued speechless. She looked like a statue of Desolation.
"I am going to tell you all, all! You will pardon me, will you not, lovely Maximina?"
And the audacious _caballero_ pronounced these words with his insinuating, mellow voice, at the same time gently laying the palm of his hand on the back of Maximina's. She withdrew it as though she had touched a vile animal; and leaping to her feet, as though pushed by a spring, she ran to the door, and hastened into the parlor.
Don Alfonso followed her, and caught her by her arm. Then, pulling herself away with remarkable power, she broke from his touch, but, instead of running, she faced him with flaming cheeks, looking at him with frenzied eyes that were frightful to see.
The truth is, that among the many attitudes which he had imagined that Miguel's wife might assume, Saavedra had never thought of such an one. He expected repulses, indignant phrases, even insulting words, and he was prepared to meet them with a cold and careless mien; he expected to be commanded to go on the instant, he expected the threat that she would shout, and he was likewise prepared with what to say to calm her immediately; finally, in the depths of his heart, his presumption flattered him by saying that Maximina could not long resist his attraction and his fame as a seducer. But these strange, inconvenient flights, this mute terror, surprised and somewhat disconcerted him.