e. Rosario joined the neighbors on the beach and began to
dirty her hands on the slimy fish baskets. Falling from her high estate
as heiress and lady she became a fish-woman, one of the poorest and
hardest-working followers of that soul-killing trade. She was up now
every morning shortly after midnight, waiting on the shore with her feet
in the puddles, drawing a frayed and threadbare shawl about her
shivering body, when the storms blew. All the way to Valencia she would
go on foot carrying that back-breaking load of fish, and it would be
dark again by the time she got home, faint with hunger and fatigue, but
happy withal because her lord and master could still live the life of a
gentleman without any humiliations to translate into swear-words and
beatings. That Tonet might pass his night in the cafe, swapping stories
with engineers from the steamers or skippers from the fishing boats, she
would, many a time in the Fishmarket in town, stifle the hunger that
gripped her at sight of the cups of steaming chocolate and the breaded
chops her companions were busy with at the tables in their stalls.

The important thing was to keep her idol appeased, an idol so quick to
wrath, so prone to curse the rotten marriage he had made. He had to have
his _peseta_ for the night's session at coffee and dominoes. He had to
have his square meal and his flashy flannel shirts. He had a reputation
to keep up. And so long as he had what he wanted, the poor little wife,
thinner and more peaked every day, found all her struggles well worth
while, cost her what it might. She was an old woman before thirty, but
she could boast of exclusive proprietorship of the handsomest buck in
the Cabanal.

Privation brought them closer to the Rector's household, which, while
they were going down and down, was going up and up, on the wings of
prosperity. Brothers have to stand together in hard luck. Of course!
And Rosario, though much against her inner preferences, went to see
Dolores often, and accepted a renewal of intimate friendship between her
husband and his sister-in-law. She was worried, but there must not be an
open quarrel. The Rector would get mad; and he it was who kept them
going on weeks when no fish came in, or when the village dandy found
nothing to get a commission on as go-between in one of the little
business deals that feature life in a seaport town. But the moment came
when the two women, deadly enemies underneath, could pretend cordiality