Lavinia watched now in fascinated terror; she could not remove her gaze from the slim figure in the short black jacket and narrow crimson sash. At the moment when her tension relaxed, Mochales, with a short running step, vaulted cleanly to the top of the wall. His cigarette was still burning. She wanted desperately to add her praise to Anna Mantegazza's enthusiastic plaudits, Gheta's subtle smile; but only the utmost banalities occurred to her.
They descended the stone steps and slowly mounted toward the house. Cesare Orsi resolutely dropped back beside Lavinia.
"You are really superb!" he told her in his highly colored Neapolitan manner. "Most women—Anna Mantegazza for example—are like children before such a show as that back there. Your sister, too, was pleased; it appealed to her vanity, as the fellow intended it should. But you only disliked it. . . . I could see that in your attitude. It was the circus—that's all."
Lavinia gazed at him out of an unfathomable contempt. She thought: What a fool he is! It wasn't Abrego y Mochales' courage that appealed to her most, although that had afforded her an exquisite thrill, but his powerful grace, his absolute physical perfection. Orsi was heated again and his tie had slipped up over the back of his collar.
She recalled the first talk she had had with him about Mochales and the manner in which she had masked her true feeling for the latter.
How easy Orsi had been to mislead! Now she was seized by the desire to show him the actual state of her
