g it, and sang a tango
in horrible fashion, in her strong, peasant voice.

"I confess that I was seized with an impulse to speak to her 'in the
name of morality,'--that hypocritical desire we all possess to propagate
virtue when we are sated and desire is dead.

"She raised her eyes, astonished to see me look so solemn, preaching to
her, like a missionary glorifying chastity with a prostitute on his
knees; her gaze wandered continually from my austere countenance to the
bed close by. Her common sense was baffled before the incongruity
between such virtue and the excesses of a moment before.

"Suddenly she seemed to understand, and an outburst of laughter swelled
her fleshy neck.

"'The deuce!... How amusing you are! And with what a face you say all
these things! Just like the priest of my home town....'

"No, Pepa, I'm serious. I believe you're a good girl; you don't realize
what you've gone into, and I'm warning you. You've fallen very low, very
low. You're at the bottom. Even within the career of vice, the majority
of women resist and deny the caresses that are required of you in this
house. There is yet time for you to save yourself. Your parents have
enough for you to live on; you didn't come here under the necessity of
poverty. Return to your home, and the past will be forgotten; you can
tell them a lie, invent some sort of tale to justify your flight, and
who knows?... One of the fellows that used to serenade you will marry
you, you'll have children and you'll be a respectable woman.

"The girl became serious when she saw that I was speaking in earnest.
Little by little she began to slip from my knees until she was on her
feet, eyeing me fixedly, as if she saw before her some strange person
and an invisible wall had arisen between the two.

"'Go back to my home!' she exclaimed in harsh accents. 'Many thanks. I
know very well what that means. Get up before dawn, work like a slave,
go out in the fields, ruin your hands with callouses. Look, see how my
hands still show them.'

"And she made me feel the rough lumps that rose on the palms of her
strong hands.

"'And all this, in exchange for what? For being respectable?... Not a
bit of it! I'm not that crazy. So much for respectability!'

"And she accompanied these words with some indecent motions that she had
picked up from her companions.

"Afterwards, humming a tune, she went over to the mirror to survey
herself, and smilingly greeted the reflection of