the life-giving breeze of the street.

"Shall I open the window?" asked she.

"No, no," murmured Enrique. "I'm very weak. The cold would kill me."

Alicia, seated on the bed--that poor bed one night perfumed with violets
by her body--silently looked at him. A broad-brimmed crimson hat, decked
with a splendid white plume, shaded her pale face. Her green eyes shone
wickedly in the livid, bluish circles under them. The free-and-easy
grace of her manner, the childish shortness of her waist, the robust
fullness of her hips and breast, and the uneasiness with which her
impatient, dancing little feet tapped the floor as if they wanted to run
away, strongly contrasted with the ugliness of the room--the bare,
half-furnished room heavy with the odors of death.

Candelas seemed truly moved. But Alicia felt as if she were choking. The
terrible nausea kept gaining on her. Now and then she raised her lace
handkerchief to her pleasure-loving nose--her nose which all the
afternoon had breathed the free, fresh air of the race-track. Her
growing disgust overcame her distress. She could not weep. And after
all, why should she? Just so she could get away from there quickly,
little cared she whether Enrique lived a few hours more or less. In her
abysmal ingratitude, Alicia Pardo wondered that women could love a man
so much as to kiss his dead lips.

Suddenly, anxious to have it all over, she asked:

"But--how did they wound you?"

Enrique opened his eyes again, and then his lips.

"I'll tell you," said he.

Despite the terrible bleeding he had suffered, some little strength
still remained in him. This last, dying strength enabled him to speak.

"I stole for you, Alicia," he gasped, "because you told me, that evening
you sent me away, I could see you again when I should bring you the
necklace you wanted."

Alicia exclaimed:

"I don't remember that!"

"Well, I do! You told me so. I remember it all."

The young woman shrugged her shoulders. Her impure eyes, of absinthe
hue, were moistened by no tear. Candelas, on the other hand, was showing
herself more human, far more a woman. Her eyes were drowned with grief.
Enrique continued speaking. His manner was grave. Quite suddenly the
youth had become a man.

"I decided to win you back," said he, "to offer you the thing you wanted
so much. Last night, when I went into that shop, I wasn't perfectly sure
what I was going to do. Still, I went up to the counter, and told them I
wanted