of reunion.

What a sunrise it had been that day when he set out! Rafael burned with
shame as he crept like a burglar in his stockings and on tip-toe,
through the room where his mother received the orchard-folk and adjusted
all accounts pertaining to the tilling of the land. He groped his way
along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed
windows. His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her
breathe--the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery
from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts. He could still feel
the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the
keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority in
the lock of an old chest where dona Bernarda kept her savings. With
tremulous hands he had collected all the money she had put away in the
small boxes there. A thief, a thief! But, after all, he was taking only
what belonged to him. He had never asked for his share of his father's
estate. Leonora was rich. With admirable delicacy she had refused to
talk of money during their preparations for the journey; but he would
refuse to live on her! He did not care to be like Salvatti, who had
exploited the singer in her youth! That thought it had been which gave
him strength to take the money finally and steal out of the house. But
even on the train he felt uneasy; and _su senoria_, the deputy, shivered
with an instinctive thrill of fear, every time a tricorne of the Civil
Guard appeared at a railroad station. What would his mother say when she
got up and found the money gone?

As he entered the hotel his self-confidence returned and his spirits
revived. He felt as if he were entering port after a storm. He found
Leonora in bed, her hair spread over the pillow in waves of gold, her
eyes closed, and a smile on her lips, as if he had surprised her in the
middle of a dream, where she had been tasting her memories of love. They
ordered lunch in the room early, intending to set out on their journey
at once. Circumspection, prudence, until they should be once beyond the
Spanish border! They would leave that evening on the Barcelona mail for
the frontier. And calmly, tranquilly, like a married couple discussing
details of house-keeping in the calm of a quiet home, they ran over the
list of things they would need on the train.

Rafael had nothing. He had fled like a fugitive from a fire, with the
first clothes he laid hands o