, thought he, the whole
blame wasn't his. Rafaela's tirade and the wine he himself had drunk,
had been more than half at fault. Men, he reflected, certainly do become
brutes when they drink.

The young woman was in her bedroom. From time to time, Berlanga heard
her sigh deeply. Her sighs were long and tremulous, like those of a
child still troubled in its dreams after having cried itself to sleep.

The silversmith exclaimed:

"Oh, Rafaela!"

He had to call her twice more. At last, in a kind of groan, the young
woman answered:

"Well, what do you want?"

Slyly and proudly the silversmith grinned to himself. That question of
hers practically amounted to forgiveness. The sweet moment of
reconciliation was close at hand.

"Come here!" he ordered.

Another pause followed, during which the will of the man and of the
woman seemed to meet and struggle, with strange magnetism, in the
stillness of the dark house.

"Come, girl!" repeated the smith, softening his voice.

Then he added, after a moment:

"Well, don't you want to come?"

Another minute passed; for all women, even the simplest and most
ignorant, know to perfection the magic secret of making a man wait for
them. But after a little while, Berlanga heard Rafaela's bare feet
paddling along the hall. The young woman reached the bedroom of the
silversmith, and in the shadows her exploring hands met the hands that
Manolo was stretching out to greet her.

"What do you want, anyhow?" she demanded, humble yet resentful.

"Come to bed!"

She obeyed. Many kisses sounded, given her by the smith. After a while
the man's voice asked in an endearing yet overmastering way:

"Now, then, are you going to be good?"

* * * * *

Amadeo Zureda came back a couple of days later, eminently well pleased.
His boy had played the part of a regular little man during the whole
run. He had never cried, but had eaten whatever they had given him and
had slept like a top, on the coal. When Zureda kissed his wife, he
noticed that she had a black-and-blue spot on her forehead.

"That looks like somebody had hit you," said he. "Have you been fighting
with any one?"

She hesitated, then answered:

"No, no. Why, who'd I be fighting with? Much less coming to blows? The
night you left, the oil-bottle fell off the sideboard, and when I went
to pick it up I got this bump."

"How about that big scratch, there?"

"Which one? Oh, you mean on my lip? I di