-dresses--majestically
full as senatorial togas--he sadly recalled the poor little white
chemises and coarse underwear lacking in all adornment, that the women
of his home-town hung out to dry on their clothes-lines.

Now a new detail came to increase his misery. The peddler and Alicia
were arguing excitedly over the price of the heliotrope petticoat.
Clotilde wanted seventy-five pesetas, and the young woman vowed she
couldn't go over fifty. The peddler insisted:

"You'd better make up your mind to take it, because you won't get such a
bargain anywhere else. I'm only selling it at this price just to please
you, but I'm not making a penny on the deal."

Then she turned to Enrique, and added:

"Come now, this gentleman will buy it for you!"

Darles blushed, and found nothing to say. Men without money are
contemptible; and as Alicia did not even deign to look at him, the
student knew he had lost her. Dear Lord, if there had only been some
devil's bank where lovers might barter off the years of their life, for
money, gladly would he have sold his whole existence for those cursed
seventy-five pesetas!

Tired of arguing, the peddler gathered up her things and packed them
into her valise. The conversation drifted off to other things. The women
began talking about jewels. Candelas showed a brooch that had been given
her. Clotilde offered the girls a necklace.

"If you'd like to see it, I'll bring it," said she. "I've got it at
home."

Alicia sighed deeply; and that long sigh, broken like a child's,
expressed enormous grief. She said:

"I'm in love with a necklace in a shop on Calle Mayor, and I don't want
any other. I dream about it all the time. I never saw anything so
wonderful! I tell you the man who gives me _that_, can have me."

"How much is it?"

"Fifteen thousand pesetas."

Then she fixed an inscrutable look on Darles, and added:

"I think this gentleman here is going to get it for me. Aren't you,
Enrique?"

Candelas was about to laugh, but checked herself. Her penetrating eyes
had just seen in the student's congested face something of the terrific
inner struggle now possessing him. Darles was no longer able to contain
himself. He got up to leave, and his eyes showed such despair and shame
that Alicia took pity on him.

"I'll see you out," said she.

They left the little boudoir. When they got to the parlor, the
student--who hardly knew what he was doing--seized the girl's hands and
covered them wi