I can safely say, he would
not hear of for a single moment."

While speaking, she had unconsciously laid aside her fan, lifted her
mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her
shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom
with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched
kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress. With her arms still
unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three
fingers, as if it had been a prayer-book, and, with a slight inclination
of her bared head, with its accurately parted brown hair, passed slowly
out of the corridor.

Astounded, bewildered, yet conscious of some vague wound, Don Ramon
remained motionless, staring after her straight, retreating figure.
Unable to follow closely either the meaning of her words or the logic
of her reasoning, he nevertheless comprehended the sudden change in
her manner, her voice, and the frigid resurrection of a nature he had
neither known nor suspected. He looked blankly at the collapsed hammock,
as if he expected to find in its depths those sinuous graces, languid
fascinations, and the soft, half sensuous contour cast off by this
vanishing figure of propriety.

In the eight months of their enforced intimacy and platonic seclusion
he had learned to love this naive, insinuating woman, whose frank
simplicity seemed equal to his own, without thought of reserve, secrecy,
or deceit. He had gradually been led to think of the absent husband
with what he believed to be her own feelings--as of some impalpable,
fleshless ancestor from whose remote presence she derived power,
wealth, and importance, but to whom she owed only respect and certain
obligations of honor equal to his own. He had never heard her speak of
her husband with love, with sympathy, with fellowship, with regret. She
had barely spoken of him at all, and then rather as an attractive factor
in her own fascinations than a bar to a free indulgence in them. He was
as little in her way as--his children. With what grace she had adapted
herself to his--Don Ramon's--life--she who frankly confessed she had no
sympathy with her husband's! With what languid enthusiasm she had taken
up the customs of HIS country, while deploring the habits of her own!
With what goddess-like indifference she had borne this interval
of waiting! And yet this woman--who had seemed the embodiment of
romance--had received the announcement of his sacr