feel young again.

"Huh, _senora_! I believe you. This is getting on--on, and then some.
I'd say, marry them off pretty quick; for, if you don't, mark my word,
there'll soon be something for Alcira to laugh about."

And they were both mistaken. Neither the mother nor don Andres was
present to note the expression of dejection and despair on Rafael's face
when he was alone, shut up in his room, where, in the dark corners, he
could still see a pair of green, mysterious eyes gleaming at him and
tempting him.

Go back to her? Never! He still felt the shame, the humiliation of that
morning. He could see himself in all his tragic ridiculousness, in a heap
on the ground, trampled under foot by that Amazon, covered with dirt, as
humble and abashed as a criminal caught redhanded and with no excuse.
And then that word, that had cut like the lash of a whip: "Go!" As if he
were a lackey who had dared approach a Duchess! And then that gate
slamming behind him, falling like a slab over a tomb, setting up an
eternal barrier between him and the love of his life!

No, he would never go back! He was not brave enough to face her again.
That morning when he had met her by chance near the market-place, he
thought he would die of shame; his legs sagged under him, and the street
turned black as if night had suddenly fallen. She had disappeared; but
there was a ringing in his ears; and he had had to take hold of
something, as if the earth were swaying under his feet, and he would
fall.

He needed to forget that unutterable disgrace--a recollection as
tenacious as remorse itself. That was why he had plunged into the
affair with his mother's protegee--as a sort of anaesthetic. She was a
woman! And his hands, which seemed to have been unbound since that
painful morning, went out toward her; his tongue, free after his
vehement confession of love at the orchard-gate, spoke glibly now
expressing an adoration that seemed to go beyond the inexpressive
features of Remedios, and reach far, far away, to the Blue House, where
the other woman was, offended and in hiding.

With Remedios he would feel some sign of life, only to relapse into
torpid gloom the moment he was left alone. It was a foamy, frothy
intoxication he felt when with the girl, an effervescence that all
evaporated in solitude. He thought of Remedios as a piece of green
fruit--sound, free of cut or stain, and with all the color of maturity,
but lacking the taste that satisfies and the