he turned to the actor with a full-lipped smile and said,
"There's nothing the matter with him, Paco. He's not even hungry. You
woke him up, the poor little angel, talking so loud."

She got to her feet again, and with slow unspeakable dignity walked
back and forth across the end of the room with the child at her breast.
Each time she turned she swung the trailing blanket round with a sudden
twist of her body from the hips.

Telemachus watched her furtively, sniffing the hot aroma of coffee and
cognac from his glass, and whenever she turned the muscles of his body
drew into tight knots from joy.

"_Es buena chica...._ She's a nice kid, from Malaga. I picked her up
there. A little stupid.... But these days...." the actor was saying
with much shrugging of the shoulders. "She dances well, but the public
doesn't like her. _No tiene cara de parisiana._ She hasn't the Parisian
air.... But these days, _vamos_, one can't be too fastidious. This
taste for French plays, French women, French cuisine, it's ruined the
Spanish theatre."

The fire flared crackling. Telemachus sat sipping his coffee waiting
for the unbearable delight of the swing of the girl's body as she
turned to pace back towards him across the room.

_XIV: Benavente's Madrid_

All the gravel paths of the Plaza Santa Ana were encumbered with wicker
chairs. At one corner seven blind musicians all in a row, with violins,
a cello, guitars and a mournful cornet, toodled and wheezed and
twiddled through the "Blue Danube." At another a crumpled old man, with
a monkey dressed in red silk drawers on his shoulder, ground out "_la
Paloma_" from a hurdygurdy. In the middle of the green plot a fountain
sparkled in the yellow light that streamed horizontally from the cafes
fuming with tobacco smoke on two sides of the square, and ragged
guttersnipes dipped their legs in the slimy basin round about it,
splashing one another, rolling like little colts in the grass. From the
cafes and the wicker chairs and tables, clink of glasses and dominoes,
patter of voices, scuttle of waiters with laden trays, shouts of men
selling shrimps, prawns, fried potatoes, watermelon, nuts in little
cornucopias of red, green, or yellow paper. Light gleamed on the
buff-colored disk of a table in front of me, on the rims of two
beer-mugs, in the eyes of a bearded man with an aquiline nose very
slender at the bridge who leaned towards me talking in a deep even
voice, telling me in swift lis