g over his spirit.
Sadly he bowed to the conviction that another love like the first was
impossible.

For two months he had been the lover of Cora, a popular girl of the
private rooms of the Fornos, a tall, thin, strong Galician beauty--as
strong, alas, as the other. Cora had spent a few months in Paris, and
had returned thence with her hair bleached and a distinctly French
manner of lifting her skirt as if she were strolling along the
_trottoir_ of the _boulevards_. She had a sweet way of mixing French
words in her conversation, calling everybody _mon cher_ and pretending
expertness in the organization of a supper. At all events she shone like
a great _cocotte_ among her competitors, though her real asset was a
line of _risque_ stories, and a certain gift for low songs.

Rafael soon wearied of this affair. He did not like her manufactured
beauty, nor her tiresome chatter that always turned on fashions. She was
always wanting money for herself and for her friends. Rafael, as a
wealthy miser, grew alarmed. Remorsefully he thought of his children's
future, as if he were ruining them; and of what his economical Remedios
would say of his considerably augmented expenditures. Well he knew that
Remedios haggled for everything down to the last _centimo_, and that her
one extravagance was an occasional new shawl for the local Virgin, and
an annual _fiesta_ for the Saint with a large orchestra and hundreds of
candles! He broke off relations with the Galician _boulevardiere_, and
found the rupture a sweet relief. It seemed to remove a sully from the
memory of his youthful passion. Moreover, his Party had just returned to
power and it was important to have no blemish on his standing as a
"serious" person! He resumed his seat on the Right, and near the Blue
Bench this time, as one of the senior deputies. The moment for work had
come! Now, it was time to see whether he could not make a position for
himself with one good boost!

They named him to the Committee on the Budget, and he took it upon
himself to refute certain strictures presented by the Opposition to the
Government program on Pardon and Justice. One friend he could count on
was the minister: a respectable, solemn marquis who had once been an
Absolutist, and who, wearied of platonisms, as he put it, had finally
"recognized" the liberal regime, without amending his former ideas,
however.

Rafael was as nervous as a schoolboy on the eve of his first
examinations. At the l