, diabolical eyes of its
principal denizen, that pair of fresh lips with their ironic smile that
seemed to quiver between two rows of gleaming white teeth, would become
the inevitable center of all his dreams.

Why resist any longer? He could think of her as much as he
pleased--that, at least, his mother would never learn. And he gave
himself up to the imagination of love, where distance lent an ever
stronger enchantment to that woman.

He felt a vehement longing to return to his city. Absence seemed to do
away with all the obstacles at home. His mother was not so formidable as
he had thought. Who could tell whether, when he went back--changed as he
felt himself to be by his new experiences--it would not be easier to
continue the old relations? After so much isolation and solitude she
might receive him in more cordial fashion!

The Cortes were about to adjourn, so, in obedience to repeated urging
from his fellow-partisans, and from dona Bernarda, to _do
something_--anything at all--to show interest in the home town--he took
the floor one afternoon at the opening of the session, when only the
president, the sergeant-at-arms, and a few reporters asleep in the
press-gallery, were present, and, with his lunch rising in his throat
from emotion, asked the Minister of Internal Affairs to show a little
more despatch in the matter of flood protection at Alcira--a bill still
in its in-fancy, though it had been pending some seventy years.

After this he was free to return with the halo of a "business-like"
deputy shining about his head--"a zealous defender of the region's
interests," the local weekly and party organ called him. And that
morning, as he stepped off the train, the deputy, deaf to the Royal
March and to the _vivas_, stood up on tiptoe, trying to descry through
the waving banners the Blue House nestling in the distance among the
orange-trees.

As he approached the place that afternoon he was almost sick with
nervousness and emotion. For one last time he thought of his mother, so
intent upon maintaining her prestige and so fearful of hostile gossip;
of the demagogues who had thronged the doors of the cafes that morning,
making fun of the demonstration in his honor; but all his scruples
vanished at sight of the hedge of tall rose-bays and prickly hawthorns
and of the two blue pillars supporting a barrier of green wooden bars.
Resolutely he pushed the gate open, and entered the garden.

Orange-trees stretched in ro