ething in the rather scornful familiarity of her greeting infinitely
humbled him. He grew pale. All the blood in his body seemed flooding his
heart, turning to ice there. Still discourteous, Alicia introduced him
to the other girl:

"Senor Darles--my friend, Candelas."

Candelas fixed her keen, vivid eyes on the new-comer. Then she peered at
Alicia, as if asking whether this visit might not perhaps veil some
amorous secret. The girl understood, and gave her friend's sophisticated
question a vertical answer:

"No, you're wrong. Enrique comes here only because he's Don Manuel's
friend."

The student nodded assent to this, and Candelas smiled coldly. Then the
two girls once more took up the thread of the conversation broken by the
arrival of Darles. The poor fellow sensed that he was isolated and
dismissed. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, with no break in that
animated chatter. Men's names came into it; and Candelas laughed
heartily as she reviewed the details of a recent supper she had had.
Alicia laughed, too. Quite possibly she did this to hurt the student's
feelings and to persuade herself Enrique really was nothing more to her
than just Don Manuel's friend.

A visitor dropped in; an old woman who dealt in clothes and trinkets.
She had a heavy bundle with her, and this she put down on the floor.
Alicia asked her:

"Well, Clotilde, what's new?"

Clotilde fairly oozed enjoyment, in her thick cloak, as she answered:

"I've got the finest petticoats and stockings in the world."

"High-priced?"

"Dirt cheap! I don't know why, but I've got it into my head you want to
spend a little money, to-day."

Then the furnishings of the little boudoir vanished under a many-colored
flood of showy silks--green, brown, blue--which, as they were spread
out, diffused a most delightful perfume of cleanness. As if under some
magic spell, Alicia and Candelas fell a prey to the intense, acquisitive
passion that tortures women in front of shop-windows. The two girls vied
in asking the price of every treasure.

"This petticoat here, how much?"

"Seeing it's you, a hundred pesetas."

"And that heliotrope one?"

"Seventy-five. Just take a good look at it. Wonderful!"

With amazement, Enrique studied this profusion of elegance and luxury.
He had never even dreamed civilization wove so many refinements about
the art of love. And as his frank eyes observed these petticoats that
gently rustled, or took in the lace of these night