en week
I've had! Say, I've hardly pulled down enough for my drinks."

He got together seven dollars, piled them up--making a little column of
silver change--and shoved them over to Rafaela.

"Here you go!" said he.

She blushed, as she answered. You would have thought her offended by the
somewhat hostile opposition of debtor and creditor that the money seemed
to have set up between them. She asked:

"What's all this you're giving me?"

"Say! What d'you suppose? Don't I pay every week? Well, then, here's my
board. Seven days at five pesetas per, that's just thirty-five pesetas,
huh? What's the matter with you?"

He made the coins jump and jingle in his agile hand, well-used to
dealing cards. Then he added:

"To-day's Saturday. So then, I'll pay you now. That'll leave me three
pesetas for extras--tobacco and car-fare. Oh, it's a fine time _I'll_
have!"

With a lordly gesture, good-natured, protecting, the woman handed back
Berlanga's money.

"Next week you can pay up," said she. "I'm fixed all right. By luck,
even if I'm not five dollars to the good, I'm not five to the bad."

The silversmith offered the money again. But this time the offer was
weak, and was made only in the half-hearted way that seemed necessary to
keep him in good standing. Then he got up from the table, rubbed his
hands up and down his legs to smooth the ugly bulge out of the knees of
his trousers, pulled down his vest and readjusted the knot of his cravat
before the mirror. He exclaimed with a kind of boastful swagger:

"D'you know what I'm thinking?"

"Tell me!"

"Oh, I don't dare."

"Why not?"

"You might get mad at me."

"No, no!"

"Promise you won't?"

"On my word of honor! Come on, now, say anything you like, and _I_ won't
mind."

"Well--how about--_him_?"

"I know what I'm doing!"

"Yes, but--see here! You don't care a hang for me, anyhow. You don't
think very much of _me_!

"I do, too! I think a lot!"

She looked at him in a gay, provocative manner, stirred to the depths of
her by such a strong, overpowering caprice that it almost seemed love.

Expansively the silversmith answered:

"Well, then, since we've got money and we're all alone, why don't we
take in a dance, to-night?"

The whole Junoesque body of the young woman--a true Madrid
type--trembled with joy. It had been a long time since she had had any
such amusement; not since her marriage had she danced. Zureda, something
of a stick-in-the-mud and in