in the eyes of a man for the first time, her vanity
of sex responds, if her passions do not.

She half turned back and stood looking down the hill to the brilliant
noisy street.

Why should I not go back and live with him, and disappear from a world
which takes no interest in me, and in which I am no earthly use? she
thought. And no life could be worse than mine, nor more immoral, for
that matter. I have never fulfilled a single one of the conditions for
which woman was born, and I'd be more normal as that man's mistress, and
less unhappy even if he beat me, which he probably would, than living
the life of a blind mole underground.

Then she wondered who her deliverer was, and wondered if he too had
wanted her. Some portion of the blackness in her soul receded suddenly,
and she smiled and trembled slightly. Involuntarily her back
straightened, and she lifted her head. But with the sudden rush of
sexual pride the magnetism of its creators receded, and she turned her
back on the flare below and continued to mount the hill. In a moment she
turned into a badly lighted alley thinly peopled. Here there was but a
tinkle of music, and it came from the guitar. Fat old women with black
shawls pinned about their heads sat on the doorsteps of ramshackle
houses talking to men whose flannel shirts revealed hairy chests. The
women looked stupid, the men weather-beaten, but the prevailing
expression was good-natured. In the middle of the street was a tamale
stand surrounded by patrons. The aroma of highly seasoned cooking came
from a restaurant at the foot of a rickety flight of steps. Every
dilapidated window had its flower-box.

This, then, was Spanish town. Magdalena had dreamed of it often,
picturing it a blaze of colour, a moving picture-book, crowded with
beautiful girls and handsome gaily attired men. There was not a young
person to be seen. Nothing could be less picturesque, more sordid.

An old crone with a face like a withered apple followed her, whining for
a nickel. The others stared at her with the stolid dignity of their
race. She gave the woman the nickel and interrupted the invocation.

"Are there no girls here?"

"Girl come from other place sometimes, then have the baby and is old
queeck. Si the senorita stay here, she have the baby and grow old too."

Magdalena hastened on. She neither knew nor cared where she went, but
after a time struck down the slope again, judging that she was beyond
the centre of social