. Capacity for suffering
is developed in every human being worthy of the name.«
    »Captain Blunt doesn't seem to be a very happy person,« I said. »He seems to
have a grudge against everybody. People make him wince. The things they do, the
things they say. He must be awfully mature.«
    Mills gave me a sidelong look. It met mine of the same character and we both
smiled without openly looking at each other. At the end of the Rue de Rome the
violent chilly breath of the mistral enveloped the victoria in a great widening
of brilliant sunshine without heat. We turned to the right, circling at a
stately pace about the rather mean obelisk which stands at the entrance to the
Prado.
    »I don't know whether you are mature or not,« said Mills humorously. »But I
think you will do. You ...«
    »Tell me,« I interrupted, »what is really Captain Blunt's position there?«
    And I nodded at the alley of the Prado opening before us between the rows of
the perfectly leafless trees.
    »Thoroughly false, I should think. It doesn't accord either with his
illusions or his pretensions, or even with the real position he has in the
world. And so what between his mother and the General Headquarters and the state
of his own feelings he ...«
    »He is in love with her,« I interrupted again.
    »That wouldn't make it any easier. I'm not at all sure of that. But if so it
can't be a very idealistic sentiment. All the warmth of his idealism is
concentrated upon a certain Américain, Catholique et gentilhomme. ....«
    The smile which for a moment dwelt on his lips was not unkind.
    »At the same time he has a very good grip of the material conditions that
surround, as it were, the situation.«
    »What do you mean? That Doña Rita« (the name came strangely familiar to my
tongue) »is rich, that she has a fortune of her own?«
    »Yes, a fortune,« said Mills. »But it was Allègre's fortune before. ... And
then there is Blunt's fortune: he lives by his sword. And there is the fortune
of his mother, I assure you a perfectly charming, clever, and most aristocratic
old lady, with the most distinguished connections. I really mean it. She doesn't
live by her sword. She ... she
