her eyes, the reflection of painful thoughts.

She referred with acrid mirth one night to what people were saying about
them. Everything was found out sooner or later in that city! The gossip
had gotten even to the Blue House! Her kitchen woman had hinted that she
had better not walk so much along the river front--she might catch
malaria. On the market place the sole topic of conversation was that
night trip down the Jucar ... the deputy, sweating his life out over
the oars, and she waking half the country up with her strange songs!...
And she laughed, but with a hard, harsh laugh of affected gaiety that
showed the nervousness underneath, though without a word of complaint.

Rafael remorsefully reflected that she had foreseen all that in first
repelling his advances. He admired her resignation. She would have been
justified in rebuking him for the harm he had done her. As it was, she
was not even telling him all she knew! Ah, the wretches! To harass an
innocent woman so! She had loved him, given herself to him, bestowed on
him the royal gift of her person. And the deputy began to hate his city,
for repaying in insult and scandal the wondrous happiness she had
conferred on its "chief"!

On another night Leonora received him with a smile that frightened him.
She was affecting a mood of hectic cheerfulness, trying to drown her
worries by sheer force, overwhelming her lover with a flood of light,
frivolous chatter; but suddenly, at the limit of her endurance, she gave
way, and in the middle of a caress, burst into tears and sank to a
divan, sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Why what's the matter? What has happened ...?"

For a time she could not answer, her voice was too choked with weeping.
At last, however, between sobs, burying her tear-stained face on
Rafael's shoulder, she began to speak, completely crushed, fainting from
virtual prostration.

She could stand it no longer! The torture was becoming unbearable. It
was useless for her to pretend. She knew as well as he what people were
saying in the city. They were spied upon continuously. On the roads, in
the orchard, along the river, there were people constantly on the watch
for something new to report. That passion of hers, so sweet, so
youthful, so sincere, was a butt of public laughter, a theme for idle
tongues, who flayed her as if she were a common street-woman, because
she had been good to him, because she had not been cruel enough to watch
a young man