We have to be their servants, love them willy-nilly. And if we don't,
they kill themselves just to spite us."

And she was silent for a time.

"Poor Macchia! He was a good boy, and deserved to be happy. But if I
were to surrender to every desperate protestation made to me!...
However, he went and did just what he said he would do.... How crazy
they get! And the worst of it is, I have found others like him in my
travels."

She explained no farther. Rafael gazed at her, but respected her
silence, trying in vain to guess the thoughts that were stirring behind
her shining eyes, as green and golden as the sea under a noonday sun.
What a wealth of romance must be hidden in that woman's past! What
tragedies must have been woven into the checkered fabric of her
wonderful career!...

So the days went by, and election time came around. Rafael, in passive
rebellion against his mother, who rarely spoke a word to him now, had
completely neglected the campaign. But on the decisive Sunday he
triumphed completely, and Rafael Brull, Deputy from Alcira, spent the
night shaking hands, receiving congratulations, listening to serenades,
waiting for morning to come that he might run to the Blue House and
receive Leonora's ironic good wishes.

"I'm very glad to hear it," the actress said. "Now you'll be leaving
very soon and I'll lose sight of you. It was high time really! You know,
my dear child, you were beginning to get tiresome with your assiduous
worship, that mute, persistent, tenacious adoration of yours. But up in
Madrid you'll get over it all. Tut, tut, now ... don't say you won't. No
need to perjure yourself. I guess I know what young men are like! And
you're a young man. The next time we meet, you'll have other things in
your head. I'll be a friend, just a friend; and that's what--and all--I
want to be."

"But will I find you here when I come back?" Rafael asked, anxiously.

"You want to know more things than anybody I ever knew! How can I say
whether I'll be here or not? Nobody in the world was ever sure of
holding me. I don't know where I'll be tomorrow myself.... But, no," she
continued, gravely, "if you come back by next spring, you'll find me
here. I'm thinking of staying surely until then. I want to see the
orange-trees in bloom, go back to my early childhood--the only memories
of my past that have followed me everywhere. Many a time I have gone to
Nice, spending a fortune and crossing half the world to get there--and