“Thank you very much,” the girl said. “When I look at you I believe it truly. But please never look at me nor think of me like that.”
“Should we hunt her down and hang her to a high tree?” the Colonel said with anticipation.
“No. Let us forget her.”
“She is forgotten,” the Colonel said. And, strangely enough, she was. It was strange because she had been present in the room for a moment, and she had very nearly caused a panic; which is one of the strangest things there is, the Colonel thought. He knew about panics.
But she was gone now, for good and forever; cauterized; exorcised and with the eleven copies of her re-classification papers, in which was included the formal, notarized act of divorcement, in triplicate.
“She is forgotten,” the Colonel said. It was quite true.
“I’m so pleased,” the girl said. “I don’t know why they ever let her into the hotel.”
“We’re enough alike,” the Colonel said. “We better not carry it too God damned far.”
“You can hang her if you wish because she is why we cannot marry.”
“She’s forgotten,” the Colonel told her. “Maybe she will take a good look at herself in the mirror sometime and hang herself.”
“Now that she is out of the room we should wish her no bad luck. But, as a good Venetian, I wish that she were dead.”
