man. His spies followed Rafael
cautiously through the night, up to the gate of the Blue House.

"What a scandal!" exclaimed dona Bernarda. "At night, too! He'll wind
up by bringing her into this house! Can it be that that simpleton of a
dona Pepita is blind to all this?"

And there was Rafael, unaware of the storm that was gathering about his
head, no longer deigning even to speak to Remedios, or look at her, as
with her head bowed like a sulky goat, she went around stifling her
tears at the memory of those happy strolls in the orchard under dona
Bernarda's surveillance.

The deputy had eyes for nothing outside of the Blue House; his happiness
had blinded him. The one thing that annoyed him was the necessity of
hiding his joy--his inability to make his good fortune public, so that
all his admirers might learn of it.

He would willingly have gone back to the days of the Roman decadence,
when the love affairs of the powerful became matters of national
adoration.

"What do I care for their gossip" he once said to Leonora. "I love you
so much that I'd like to see the whole city worship you in public. I'd
like to snatch you up in my arms, and appear upon the bridge at high
noon, before a concourse stupefied by your beauty: 'Am I or am I not
your "_quefe_"?' I'd ask. 'Well, if I am, adore this woman, who is my
very soul and without whom I could not live. The affection which you
have for me you must have also for her.' And I'd do just as I say if it
were possible."

"Silly boy ... adorable child," she had replied, showering him with
kisses, brushing his dark beard with her soft, quivering lips.

And it was during one of their meetings--when their words were broken
by sudden impulses of affection, and their lips were tightly pressed
together--that Leonora had expressed her capricious desire.

"I'm stifling in this house. I hate to caress you inside four walls, as
if you were only a passing whim. This is unworthy of you. You are Love,
who came to seek me out on the most beautiful of nights. I like you
better in the open air. You look more handsome to me then, and I feel
younger."

And recalling those trips down the river about which Rafael had told her
so many times when they were only friends--that islet with its curtains
of reeds, the willows bending over the water and the nightingale singing
from its hiding-place--she had asked him, eagerly:

"What night are you going to take me there? It's a whim of mine, a wild