jeweler's shop,
whose show-window glowed like a bed of living coals.

This calculating, daily contemplation of those treasures completely
overturned Enrique's moral standards. He, himself, did not grasp the
profound change coming upon him. Steadily this thought of stealing kept
growing in his soul, obsessing him, evolving into a resistless,
overwhelming determination.

As if to increase his torment, the emerald necklace which served as an
advertisement for the shop, found no purchaser. It was far too dear.

With his nose pressed against the plate glass of the window, Enrique
suffered long moments of anguish, unable to take his eyes from that
abyss, that precipice of gold and velvet at the bottom of which the
diamonds, topazes, emeralds, pearls, rubies and amethysts seemed the
eyes of a strange multitude peering out at him. All this time his
imagination was developing a mad, adventurous tale. With his prize
hidden in his most secret pocket, he would go to see Alicia and would
say to her: "Here, take it! Here is your necklace, the necklace that
neither Don Manuel nor any of your millionaire aristocrats would buy for
you. I, gambling my life, have got it for you! What do you say now?"

And thinking thus, he would close his eyes, seeming to feel that all
about him the air was perfumed with violets. And then when he once more
opened his eyes, the emeralds of the necklace, green and hard as
Alicia's pupils, seemed to say to him: "All your dreams and hopes, all
your sweet visionings, shall now come true!" It was the secret voice of
temptation, a voice which had transformed itself to radiance.

One night, as he was recovering from one of these long, deep fits of
abstraction, before the jeweler's window, he saw that Alicia Pardo and
her friend Candelas were really drawing near. They, too, had seen him.
Upset, almost speechless, the student saluted them. Alicia
affectionately pressed his hand; and now more strongly than ever he
breathed that violet odor which had perfumed all his dreams of theft.
The girl asked:

"Well, what are you doing here?"

"Nothing much, only passing a little time."

Alicia inspected the shop window.

"Ah, yes, yes, you were looking at my necklace, weren't you?"

"Yes, that's just what I _was_ doing."

And as he said this, he blushed deeply, because this confession was
equivalent to another, that he was drawing closer to her. Smilingly
Candelas peered at the student. Alicia added with cruel ma