thousand, and I will tread upon them all,
one after the other. Let it lie in the dirt. Let him give it to those
others, those women who want it--and him." She would go home at once;
not to the pleasure-gardens, not anywhere but back to the cottage;
and Jose followed her meekly, struck dumb. He had seen her wilful,
capricious, childishly passionate, a little hard to understand, many
times before, but never like this. What had occurred to her? What had
Sebastiano done?

Jovita had picked up the knot of gay ribbon and brushed the dust off it,
and carried it home with her, grumbling fiercely. She was never averse
to grumbling a little, and here, the saints knew, was cause.

"For pride," she kept repeating; "for pride, and to show that others are
beneath her! Mother of God! the king himself is not good enough for her!
Let him come and pray upon his knees that she will go to the palace and
wear a crown, and he will see what she will say! It is these fools of
men who spoil her, as if there had never been a pretty face before. Let
them treat her as she treats them, and she will be humble enough. She
was always one of the devil's children with her pride!"

But Pepita, who heard it all, said nothing, though once or twice she
gave her little mocking laugh.

CHAPTER III.

By the time Pepita had reached home her mood had changed--her anger was
gone, or at least the signs of it were. She sang as she prepared the
supper, and chatted gayly with Jose. It appeared that, after all, she
had enjoyed the bull-fight; it had even been better than the others;
she had had great pleasure. She made delightful little jests about
everything; she recounted the names of the people she had seen and
known; she described to him the dresses of the girls, the airs and
graces of the men. She laughed, and obliged Jose to laugh also, and all
the time she looked so pretty, with the queer light in her eyes, the
gleam of her little wicked white teeth, and the brilliant spot of color
on her cheeks, that she was enough to turn one's head.

The moon was at its brightest that night. All the earth was bathed
in pure, magic whiteness--the whiteness which somehow seems to bring
perfume and stillness and mysterious tenderness with it. Such a night!
One breathed roses and orange blossoms and jasmine. Pepita sat under the
roses and sang and talked, and Jose smoked and was happy, but still in
a state of bewilderment, though the stillness and beauty of the night