ove
meant nothing in the exuberant life of this girl. While he had been
holding her pretty little hand, a few minutes before, he had thought her
conquered and in love with him. Now all of a sudden he beheld her
transfigured, beside herself, her scatter-brained little head flung back
in an attitude of giving, that offered the victorious playwright her
snowy throat. Ethnological reasons underlie woman's adoration of
everything strong, shining, violent.

"If I were not here," thought Darles with melancholy, "surely she would
go to him."

The student got back his gayety, during the second act. Alicia pressed
up against him, slyly and nervously, and her restless curls produced
little electric ticklings on his temples. When the play was done, the
ovation broke out again, and the author once more appeared. Enrique's
applause was only mild. For a moment he thought the playwright's eyes
fell with avidity on Alicia. This painful impression still lay upon the
student as they went out into the street. The young woman walked beside
him, holding his arm and shivering with cold in her handsome gray cloak.
The night was sharp. Rain had been falling. Alicia said:

"Well, where are we going?"

He answered, in surprise:

"I'm going to take you home. We'll call a carriage."

"No, I don't want to go home."

"What?"

"Come on! I'm going to give you a treat, to-night."

She looked up at him, smiling in a fascinating, promising way that
foreshadowed paradise. In anguish the poor fellow remembered he had
hardly ten pesetas left. To escape the jostling and rude staring of the
passers-by, Alicia took refuge in a doorway. Her feet were stiff with
cold. The wetness of the pavement was soaking through the thin soles of
her shoes.

"Decide on something, quick," she shivered. "I'm dying of cold!"

Enrique exclaimed, with a resolution he thought very like that of a man
of the world:

"If you want to eat, we'll go to Fornos."

The girl made a grimace of horror.

"Never!" she cried. "Everybody knows me there!"

"Well then, let's go to Moran's."

"Worse still! I'd be sure to run into some friend or other."

"How about Vina P?"

"I should say not! I don't dare." Then with cruel frankness she added:
"Do you know why I don't dare? The women there look down on girls like
me. And if any of my friends--they're all serious men--should see me
with you, there, they'd call me flighty. They'd think me mad."

Enrique understood but little. H