soul:

"Manolo does not appear to be your son."

Without having read Darwin, Amadeo Zureda instinctively sought
explanation and consolation in the laws of heredity, for the pain now
consuming him. Never had he, even when a young fellow, been given to
drink or cards. He had not been fond of the women, nor had he been a
meddler and bully. And how had such degradations been able to engraft
themselves into the blood of his son?

Don Adolfo and Zureda got out at the station of Ecks. Afternoon was
drawing to its close. On the platform there were only six or seven
persons. The former conductor waved his hand to a woman and to a young
man, drawing near. He cried:

"There are your folks!"

This time seeing Rafaela, Amadeo did not hesitate. It was she indeed,
despite her protuberant abdomen, her sad fat face, and her white hair.
It was she!

"Rafaela!" cried he. He would have known her among a thousand other
women. They fell into each other's arms, weeping with that enormous joy
and pain felt by all who part in youth and meet again in old age, with
the whole of life behind them. After the greeting with his wife was at
an end, the engineer embraced Manolo.

"What a fine fellow you are!" he stammered, when the beating of his
heart, growing a little more calm, let him speak.

Don Adolfo said good-by.

"I'm in a hurry. We'll see each other to-morrow!" He saluted, and walked
away.

Amadeo Zureda, with Rafaela at his right and Manolo at his left, quitted
the station.

"Is the town very far away?" asked he.

"Hardly two kilometers," she answered.

"All right then, let's walk."

Slowly they made their way down the road that stretched, winding,
between two vast reaches of brown, plowed land. Far in the distance,
lighted by the dying sun, the little hamlet was visible; that miserable
collection of huts about which Zureda had thought so many times,
dreaming that there he should find the sweet refuge of peaceful
forgetfulness and of redemption.

VII

After Amadeo came to Ecks, Rafaela went no longer to the river. The
former engineer was unwilling that his wife should toil. They had enough
for all to live on for a while, with what he had made in prison. They
spoke not of the past. You might almost have thought they had forgotten
it. Why remember? Zureda had forgiven everything. Rafaela, moreover, was
no longer the same. The gay happiness of her eyes had gone dead; the
waving blackness of her hair and the girlis