common with her sister, as I told Doña Rita, was amiability.
    »For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself,« I went on. »It's
one of your characteristics, of course much more precious than in other people.
You transmute the commonest traits into gold of your own; but after all there
are no new names. You are amiable. You were most amiable to me when I first saw
you.«
    »Really. I was not aware. Not specially ...«
    »I had never the presumption to think that it was special. Moreover, my head
was in a whirl. I was lost in astonishment first of all at what I had been
listening to all night. Your history, you know, a wonderful tale with a flavour
of wine in it and wreathed in clouds, with that amazing, decapitated, mutilated
dummy of a woman lurking in a corner, and with Blunt's smile gleaming through a
fog, the fog in my eyes, from Mills' pipe, you know. I was feeling quite
inanimate as to body and frightfully stimulated as to mind all the time. I had
never heard anything like that talk about you before. Of course I wasn't sleepy,
but still I am not used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt ...«
    »Keep awake all night listening to my story!« She marvelled.
    »Yes. You don't think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn't have missed it
for the world. Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white tie and that incisive
polite voice of his seemed strange and weird. It seemed as though he were
inventing it all rather angrily. I had doubts as to your existence.«
    »Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story.«
    »Anybody would be,« I said. »I was. I didn't sleep a wink. I was expecting
to see you soon - and even then I had my doubts.«
    »As to my existence?«
    »It wasn't exactly that, though of course I couldn't tell that you weren't a
product of Captain Blunt's sleeplessness. He seemed to dread exceedingly to be
left alone and your story might have been a device to detain us ...«
    »He hasn't enough imagination for that,« she said.
    »It didn't occur to me. But there was Mills, who apparently believed in your
existence. I could trust Mills. My doubts were about the