sion, the students augured
that a favorable outcome was assured. Sandoval, who had just returned
from making calls in other boxes, also assured them that the decision
had been favorable, that that very afternoon the Superior Commission
had considered and approved it. Every one was jubilant, even Pecson
having laid aside his pessimism when he saw the smiling Pepay display
a note. Sandoval and Makaraig congratulated one another, Isagani alone
remaining cold and unsmiling. What had happened to this young man?

Upon entering the theater, Isagani had caught sight of Paulita in a
box, with Juanito Pelaez talking to her. He had turned pale, thinking
that he must be mistaken. But no, it was she herself, she who greeted
him with a gracious smile, while her beautiful eyes seemed to be
asking pardon and promising explanations. The fact was that they had
agreed upon Isagani's going first to the theater to see if the show
contained anything improper for a young woman, but now he found her
there, and in no other company than that of his rival. What passed in
his mind is indescribable: wrath, jealousy, humiliation, resentment
raged within him, and there were moments even when he wished that
the theater would fall in; he had a violent desire to laugh aloud,
to insult his sweetheart, to challenge his rival, to make a scene, but
finally contented himself with sitting quiet and not looking at her at
all. He was conscious of the beautiful plans Makaraig and Sandoval were
making, but they sounded like distant echoes, while the notes of the
waltz seemed sad and lugubrious, the whole audience stupid and foolish,
and several times he had to make an effort to keep back the tears. Of
the trouble stirred up by the hero who refused to give up the seat,
of the arrival of the Captain-General, he was scarcely conscious. He
stared toward the drop-curtain, on which was depicted a kind of
gallery with sumptuous red hangings, affording a view of a garden in
which a fountain played, yet how sad the gallery looked to him and how
melancholy the painted landscape! A thousand vague recollections surged
into his memory like distant echoes of music heard in the night, like
songs of infancy, the murmur of lonely forests and gloomy rivulets,
moonlit nights on the shore of the sea spread wide before his eyes. So
the enamored youth considered himself very wretched and stared fixedly
at the ceiling so that the tears should not fall from his eyes.

A burst of applau