But he couldn't keep up that violent exertion continuously, and when he stopped to rest we could hear him shouting to himself in vengeful tones. He saw it all! He had been decoyed there! (Rattle, rattle, rattle.) He had been decoyed into that town, he screamed, getting more and more excited by the noise he made himself, in order to be exposed to this! (Rattle, rattle.) By this shameless "Catin! Catin! Catin!"
He started at the door again with superhuman vigour. Behind me I heard Dona Rita laughing softly, statuesque, turned all dark in the fading glow. I called out to her quite openly, "Do keep your self- control." And she called back to me in a clear voice: "Oh, my dear, will you ever consent to speak to me after all this? But don't ask for the impossible. He was born to be laughed at."
"Yes," I cried. "But don't let yourself go."
I don't know whether Ortega heard us. He was exerting then his utmost strength of lung against the infamous plot to expose him to the derision of the fiendish associates of that obscene woman! . . . Then he began another interlude upon the door, so sustained and strong that I had the thought that this was growing absurdly impossible, that either the plaster would begin to fall off the ceiling or he would drop dead next moment, out there.
He stopped, uttered a few curses at the door, and seemed calmer from sheer exhaustion.
"This story will be all over the world," we heard him begin. "Deceived, decoyed, inveighed, in order to be made a laughing-stock before the most debased of all mankind, that woman and her associates." This was really a meditation. And then he screamed: "I will kill you
