Rangel thought of slipping her the letter under the table, but since nothing had been said between them, she would be taken too much by surprise, and that would spoil everything. Best to say something first. He looked around the table: all the faces were bent over their cards, attentively following the numbers. Then he leaned to his right and looked down at Joaninha’s cards, as if checking something.

“You have two squares left,” he whispered.

“No, I haven’t. I have three.”

“Oh, yes, quite right. Three. Now, listen—”

“And you?”

“I have two.”

“What do you mean, ‘two’? You have four.”

There were indeed four; she leaned closer as she pointed to them, almost brushing her ear against his lips; then she looked up at him laughing and shaking her head: “Oh, Senhor Rangel! Senhor Rangel!” Rangel listened with exquisite delight; her voice was so soft, her tone so amicable that he forgot everything, seized her by the waist, and launched them both into the eternal waltz of the chimeras. House, table, guests, all vanished as if they were mere fancies, leaving the two of them as the one true reality, turning and turning in space beneath a million stars that shone for them and them alone.

No letter, nothing. As dawn approached, they all went to the window to watch the guests leaving the ball across the street. Rangel recoiled in horror. He saw Queirós and the lovely Joaninha brush fingers. He tried to explain this away as a mere illusion, but no sooner had he demolished one such illusion than up sprang another and another, breaking over him like never-ending waves. He could scarcely believe that a single night, a few hours, could be enough to bind two creatures together like that, but the proof was there in their gestures, their eyes, their words, their laughter, and even in the regret with which they parted in the early hours of the morning.

He left, feeling bewildered. A single night! A few hours! When he arrived home late, he lay down on his bed, not in order to sleep, but to sob. Only now, alone, did all his affectations desert him; no longer was he the haughty Mr. Diplomat, he was the crazed madman, tossing and turning on his bed, screaming and bawling like a child, made truly miserable by his sad autumnal love. The poor devil, made of daydreams, indolence, and pretension, was, in substance, as wretched as Othello, and had met a still crueler fate.

Othello killed Desdemona; our lover, whose hidden passions went unnoticed by anyone, served as a witness when, six months later, Queirós married Joaninha.

Neither events nor the passing years changed his essential nature. When the Paraguayan War broke out, he often thought about enlisting as an officer with the volunteers, but he never did; although there can be no doubt that he won several battles and ended up a brigadier.

Life!

LIFE!