and well cared for. She liked fine shoes
and starched petticoats that frou-froued as she walked.

Her mind resembled her body. It was restless, lively and incapable of
keeping the same point of view for very long. When she talked, those
coquettish eyes of hers shone brighter than ever, with enjoyment. Her
mouth was rather large; her teeth dazzling; and the light of laughter
always shone there like an altar-lamp.

Amadeo worshiped her. When he came home at night from work, Rafaela ran
to meet him with noisy jubilation and then cuddled herself caressingly
on his knees, after he had sat down. All this filled Zureda with
ineffable joy, so that he became quite speechless, in ecstasy. At such
times even the thoughtful scar of the wrinkle between his brows grew
less severe, in the calm gravity of his dark forehead.

The newly married couple took lodgings on the sixth floor of a house not
far from the Estacion del Norte. The house was new, and their apartment
was full of sun and cheer, with big, well-lighted rooms. They had a
couple of balconies, too; and these the busy, artistic hands of Rafaela
kept smothered in flowers.

Amadeo was a locomotive-engineer. The company liked him well and more
than well. During the two years he had been on the Madrid-Bilbao run he
had never been called in for reprimand. He was intelligent and a hard
worker. Fifteen hours he could stand up to the job, and still see just
as clearly as ever with those black, powerful eyes of his. In his
corduroys, this muscular, dark-skinned, impassive man reminded you of a
bronze.

He was devoted to his job. He had learned engineering in the States,
which everybody knows is a master-country for railroading. His parents
had both died when he was very young. He had dedicated the whole
plenitude of his affections, his sap and vigor as a single man, to his
work. Foot by foot he knew the right-of-way from Madrid to Bilbao in its
most intimate details, so that he could have made that run blindfolded,
just as safely as if he had been walking about his own house. There were
clumps of trees, ravines, rivers, hills and farms that, to his eyes, had
the decisive meaning of a watch or a map.

"At such-and-such a place," he would think, "I've got to jam the brakes
on; there's a down-grade just beyond." Or else: "Here's the bridge. It
must be so-and-so o'clock." His grip on such ideas of time and space was
always exactly right. He seemed infallible. Zureda knew that all th