woman's life!

How long had they been walking through the streets of Valencia?... His
legs were sagging under him! He was faint with weariness. He could
hardly see. The gables of the houses were still tipped with sunlight,
yet he seemed to be groping about in a deep night.

"I'm thirsty, don Andres. Let's go in somewhere."

The old man headed him toward the Cafe de Espana, his favorite resort.
He selected the table in the center of the big square salon under the
four clocks supported by the angel of Fame. The walls were covered with
great mirrors that opened up fantastic perspectives in the dingy room
where the gilded ornaments were blackened by the smoke and a crepuscular
light filtered in through the lofty skylight as into a sombre crypt.

Rafael drank, without realizing just what his glass contained--a poison,
it felt like, that froze his heart. Don Andres sat looking at the
writing articles on the marble table: a letter-case of wrinkled
oil-cloth, and a grimy ink-well. He began to rap upon them with the
holder of the public pen--rusty and with the points bent--an instrument
of torture well fitted for a hand committed to despair!

"We have just an hour to catch our train! Come, Rafael, be a man!
There's still time! Come, let's get out of this mess we're in!"

And he held out the pen, though he had not said a word about writing to
anybody.

"I can't, don Andres. I'm a gentleman. I've given my word; and I will
not go back upon it, come what may!"

The old man smiled ironically.

"Very well, be as much of a gentleman as you please. She deserves it!
But when you break with her, when she leaves you, or you leave her,
don't come back to Alcira. Your mother won't be there to welcome you! I
shall be--I don't know where; and those who made you deputy will look
upon you as a thief who robbed and killed his mother.... Oh, get mad if
you want to--beat me up even; people at the other tables are already
looking at us.... Why not top the whole business off with a saloon
brawl? But just the same, everything I've been saying to you is gospel
truth!..."

In the meantime Leonora was growing impatient in her hotel room. Three
hours had gone by. To relieve her nervousness she sat down behind the
green curtain at the window watching pedestrians crossing the square.

How like a small piazza of old Florence this place was, with its stately
aristocratic residences, shrouded in imposing gloom; it's grass-grown,
cobblestone pavem