whispered, "this--if it is true about the girl from Lisbon;
but it is not true."

For many years afterward the day of the great bull-fight was remembered.
No one who saw it forgot it as long as he lived. Affairs used to date
from it in the minds of many.

A year had passed since that first brilliant day when Pepita had gone
forth in her first festal dress. She remembered it all as she dressed
herself on this other morning. The same day seemed to have come again;
the same sunshine and deep blue sky. There were the same flowers nodding
their heads; Jovita was grumbling a little in her haste, just as she had
done then; and in the looking-glass there was the same little figure in
the bright attire--the soft black hair, the red rose, the red mouth. As
she looked, a sudden triumph made her radiant.

"I have not grown ugly," she said.

No, she had not grown ugly. She was too young and strong for that, and
excitement had flushed her into new brilliance.

When she found herself seated among the fluttering fans of rainbow
colors, that moment's glow of exultation left her. Strangely enough, she
could not help thinking of the empty church and the waxen figure before
which she had knelt, and then of the nights when she had stood watching
by the wall, and then of the sharp little knife in her breast. And then
came the clamor of the music and the grand entry of the moving stream of
color and glitter dazzling her eyes. No; just at first she had not the
power to look. Could it be she--Pepita--who felt dizzy and could not
see? who could distinguish nothing in the splendid panorama of the
triumphal march? And what clamor, what excitement there was on every
side! "What bulls! What men!" they were saying about her.

Only she seemed, in the midst of all the loud-voiced eagerness and
delight, to sit alone, a cold little figure vaguely tormented by the
gayety and the voices and the color of fluttering fans and ribbons and
costumes. The deep rose had fled from her face; she sat with her hands
wrung on her knee and waited for one moment to come.

The great bull ran bellowing around the arena; little beribboned darts
were flung at him and stuck in his shaggy shoulders; brilliant cloaks
were flaunted in his face; taunting cries mocked him. He charged hither
and thither in blind fury, scattering men and horses, who only returned
again to the attack.

"It takes too long," communed Pepita, "It takes too long."

And then the voices began to