but it was a chance. She
would not hesitate to make it hers. After all, self-preservation was the
thing which mattered. She wanted a bright fire, a good table, a horse,
a cow, and all such simple things. She wanted a roof over her and a warm
bed at night. She wanted a warm bed at night--but a warm bed at night
alone. It was the price she would have to pay for her imposture, that if
she had all these things, she could not be alone in the sleep-time. She
had not thought of this in the days when she looked forward to a home
with her Gonzales. To be near him was everything; but that was all
dead and done for; and now--it was at this point that, shrinking, she
suddenly threw off all restraining thoughts. With abandon of the
mind came a recklessness of body, which gave her, all at once, a
voluptuousness more in keeping with the typical maid of Andalusia. It
got into the eyes and senses of Jean Jacques, in a way which had nothing
to do with the philosophy of Descartes, or Kant, or Aristotle, or Hegel.

"It was beautiful in much--my childhood," she said in a low voice,
dropping her eyes before his ardent gaze, "as my father said. My mother
was lovely to see, but not bigger than I was at twelve--so petite, and
yet so perfect in form--like a lark or a canary. Yes, and she could
sing--anything. Not like me with a voice which has the note of a drum or
an organ--"

"Of a flute, bright Senorita," interposed Jean Jacques.

"But high, and with the trills in the skies, and all like a laugh with a
tear in it. When she went to the river to wash--"

She was going to say "wash the clothes," but she stopped in time and
said instead, "wash her spaniel and her pony"--her face was flushed
again with shame, for to lie about one's mother is a sickening thing,
and her mother never had a spaniel or a pony--"the women on the shore
wringing their clothes, used to beg her to sing. To the hum of the river
she would make the music which they loved--"

"La Manola and such?" interjected Jean Jacques eagerly. "That's a fine
song as you sing it."

"Not La Manola, but others of a different sort--The Love of Isabella,
The Flight of Bobadil, Saragosse, My Little Banderillero, and so on, and
all so sweet that the women used to cry. Always, always she was singing
till the time when my father became a rebel. Then she used to cry too;
and she would sing no more; and when my father was put against a wall to
be shot, and fell in the dust when the rifles rang