One of the many inconveniences of real life is that it seldom gives you a complete story.
Some incident has excited your interest, the people who are concerned in it are in the devil's own muddle, and you wonder what on earth will happen next.
Well, generally nothing happens.
The inevitable catastrophe you foresaw wasn't inevitable after all, and high tragedy, without any regard to artistic decency, dwindles into drawing-room comedy.
Now, growing old has many disadvantages, but it has this compensation (among, let us admit, not a few others), that sometimes it gives you the opportunity of seeing what was the outcome of certain events you had witnessed long ago.
You had given up the hope of ever knowing what was the end of the story, and then, when you least expected it, it is handed to you on a platter.
These reflections occurred to me when, having escorted the Marquesa de San Esteban to her car, I went back into the hotel and sat down again in the lounge.
I ordered a cocktail, lit a cigarette, and composed myself to order my recollections.
The hotel was new and splendid, it was like every other first-class hotel in Europe, and I had been regretting that for the sake of its modern plumbing I had deserted the old-fashioned, picturesque Hotel de Madrid to which I generally went when I stayed in Seville.
It was true that from my hotel I had a view of the noble river, the Guadalquivir, but that did not make up for the thГ©s dansants that filled the bar-lounge two or three days a week with a fashionable crowd whose exuberant conversation almost drowned the strident din of a jazz orchestra.
I had been out all the afternoon, and coming in found myself in the midst of a seething mob.
I went to the desk and asked for my key so that I might go straight up to my room. But the porter, handing it to me, said that a lady had been asking for me.
'For me?'
'She wants to see you very much.
It's the Marquesa de San Esteban.'
I knew no one of that name.
'It must be some mistake.'
As I said the words, looking rather vaguely around, a lady came up to me with outstretched hands and a bright smile on her lips.
To the best of my knowledge I had never seen her before in my life.
She seized my hands, both of them, and shook them warmly. She spoke in fluent French.
'How very nice to see you again after all these years.
I saw by the paper that you were staying here and I said to myself: I must look him up.
How many years is it since we danced together?
I daren't think.
Do you still dance?
I do.
And I'm a grandmother.
I'm fat of course, I don't care, and it keeps me from getting fatter.'
She talked with such a rush that it took my breath away to listen to her.
She was a stout, more than middle-aged woman, very much made up, with dark red hair, obviously dyed, cut short; and she was dressed in the height of Parisian fashion, which never suits Spanish women very well.
But she had a gay, fruity laugh that made you feel you wanted to laugh too.
It was quite obvious that she thoroughly enjoyed life.
She was a fine figure of a woman and I could well believe that in youth she had been beautiful.
But I could not place her.
'Come and drink a glass of champagne with me and we will talk of old times.
Or will you have a cocktail?
Our dear old Seville had changed, you see. ThГ©s dansants and cocktails.
It's just like Paris and London now.
We've caught up.
We're a civilized people.'
She led me to a table near the space where they were dancing and we sat down.
I could not go on pretending I was at ease; I thought I should only get into a fearful mess.
'It's terribly stupid of me, I'm afraid,' I said, 'but I don't seem able to remember ever having known anyone of your name in the old days in Seville.'
'San Esteban?' she interrupted before I could go on.
'Naturally.
My husband came from Salamanca.
He was in the diplomatic service.
I'm a widow.
You knew me as Pilar Carreon.
Of course having my hair red changes me a little, but otherwise I don't think I've altered much.'