tted by thumbing his nose and
going off down the beach cavorting and turning handsprings.

Meanwhile Tona was passing through a new honeymoon in the full maturity
of life. In comparison, her marriage with Pascualo seemed like monotony
itself. Into her passion for the soldier she put all the vehemence of a
woman whose youth is sloping toward sunset, and she paraded her joy in
bold indifference to what people were saying. Let them talk! Let them
talk till their tongues wore out! Many women were worse than she was. Of
course the girls were sore at her carrying off a good-looking fellow
right under their noses!

Martinez, for his part, with the usual dreamy expression on his face,
let himself be kissed and pampered as though he deserved every bit of
it; besides his prestige had gone up not only in his squad but with his
superiors. Why not, with a boat full of the real stuff, not to mention
that stocking crammed with silver _duros_ that sometimes stuck into his
ribs as he lay down on the bed in the stateroom! To make sleeping more
comfortable he removed that annoying obstruction, and _sina_ Tona said
not a word. Was he not to be her husband? The money was all hers, and so
long as the tavern paid as well as it was paying, there was no need to
worry.

In four or five months, however, Tona began to go around with a long
face. See here, Martinez, _sinor Martines_, just come down out of the
clouds and listen to Tona for a moment. Tona is saying something to you.
She is saying that something must be done, in the circumstances. The
present situation cannot last. A satisfactory explanation must be ready
for what is bound to occur. A respectable mother of two children cannot
be the respectable mother of three children, without a man there to step
forward and say: "This is mine!"

And Martinez said: "_Bueno!_", but there was a sign of annoyed surprise
in the way he said it, as though he had suddenly bumped against some
hard reality in his plunge from the ideal heights where he always dwelt
as a man unappreciated by the world, and where he could dream at leisure
of becoming a general, a Dictator, and all the other things the heroes
of Perez Escrich become, in that imaginative writer's novels!

Yes, he would send for the certificates necessary for the marriage
license. But it would take time of course, because Huelva was a long way
off. Tona waited, with her thoughts on Huelva, a city hazy in the
distance, which she figured must be