each other for many years; we have known each other all our lives." Then he added soothingly:

"It isn't much that I'm offering you. Servants are scarce. There are no men except my old valet and those two Italian monkeys that the Colonel managed to recruit somewhere. The rest of the service is done by women.... But even so, our life will be pleasant. We shall isolate ourselves from a world gone crazy. We will not mention this war. We shall lead a comfortable existence, as the monks did in the monasteries of the Middle Ages, which were refreshing oases of tranquillity in the midst of violence and massacres. We shall eat well; the Colonel guarantees me that. The Library from the yacht is here. When I sold the boat, I had Don Marcos install all my books on the top floor. Our friend Novoa will find some volumes there which perhaps he does not know. Everyone will do what he pleases; free monks all of us, with no other obligation than to repair to the refectory at the proper hour. And if the 'number five gentleman' and the 'number seventeen gentleman' want to drop in at the Casino, they can do so, and someone will see to it that their pockets are kept filled. We must give something to vice, what the devil! Without vices, life wouldn't be worth living."

A silent approbation greeted these words of the master of Villa Sirena.

"The one thing I insist on," continued the Prince after a long pause, "is that we live alone, as men among men. No women! Women must be excluded from our life in common."

The pianist opened his eyes in astonishment; Castro stirred in his chair; Novoa removed his glasses with a mechanical gesture of surprise, immediately adjusting them once more to his nose.

There was another silence.

"What you propose," said Atilio, at last, with a smile, "reminds me of a comedy of Shakespeare. No women! And the hero in the end gets married."

"I know that play," replied the Prince, "but I am not in the habit of governing my life according to comedies, and I don't believe in their teachings. You can rest assured that I shan't marry, even if it gives the lie to Shakespeare and the French king from whose chronicle he got the material for his work."

"But what you're attempting is absurd," Castro went on: "I don't know what the rest think, but prevent me from...!"

With a gesture he ended his protest.

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