o pack her
things!

Home! Home! Off for her native land! And might she find there something
to keep her ever from returning to the troubled stirring world she was
leaving!

She was the princess of the fairy tales longing to become a shepherdess.
There she meant to stay, in the shade of her orange-trees, now and then
fondling a memory of her old life, perhaps, but wishing eternally to
enjoy that tranquillity, fiercely repelling Rafael, therefore, because
he had tried to awaken her, as Siegfried rouses Brunhilde, braving the
flames to reach her side.

No; friends, friends, nothing else! She wanted no more of love. She
already knew what that was. Besides, he had come too late....

And Rafael tossed sleeplessly in his bed, rehearsing in the darkness the
story he had been told. He felt dwarfed, annihilated, by the grandeur of
the men who had preceded him in their adoration of that woman. A king,
great artists, handsome and aristocratic paladins, Russian counts,
potentates with vast wealth at their command! And he, a humble country
boy, an obscure junior deputy, as submissive as a child to his mother's
despotic ways, forced to beg for the money for his personal expenses
even--he was trying to succeed them!

He laughed with bitter irony at his own presumptuousness. Now he
understood Leonora's mocking tone, and the violence she had used in
repulsing all boorish liberties he had tried to take. But despite the
contempt he began to feel for himself, he lacked the strength to
withdraw now. He had been caught up in the wake of seduction, the
maelstrom of love that followed the actress everywhere, enslaving men,
casting them, broken in spirit and in will, to earth, like so many
slaves of Beauty.

III

"Good morning, Rafaelito ... we are seeing each other betimes today....
I am up so early not to miss the marketing. I remember that Wednesday
was always a great event in my life, as a child. What a crowd!..."

And Leonora, with the great swarming cities far from her mind, was
really impressed at the numbers of bustling people crowding the little
square, called _del Prado_, where every Wednesday the "grand market" of
the Alcira region was held.

Their sashes bulging with money bags, peasants were coming into town to
buy supplies for the whole week out in the orange country. Orchard women
were going from one stall to the next, as slender of body and as neatly
dressed as the peasant girls of an opera ballet, their hair