nd
for a moment she kept her great eager eyes fixed upon him, and then she
moved slowly toward him and touched him with a soft touch on his big
clumsy shoulder and said: "You are a good brother! You are a good
brother!"

"I have always loved you," he said, with simple pride. "When we were
children, you know I always promised that you should see better days."

She had forgotten to count the weeks and days, or to take note of
the changing seasons, when one hot day in the early summer he came
in--Jose--with an innocent joy in his face.

He looked questioningly at Pepita two or three times and then coughed.

"You will not mind now," he said. "It is so long ago, and it is all
over. Sebastiano has come back. He did not go to America; he is in
Madrid to-day. He came to me in the street; he did not avoid me; he was
rejoiced to see me. It appears that it is all well with him. Afterward
Manuel told me. It appears there is a very pretty girl he met in
Lisbon--she is here now. It is said he will marry her."

Pepita clinched her hands and stared at him with eyes that burned as
never before.

"It is not true!" she said through her teeth. "It is not true!"

Jose fell back two steps.

"Not true?" he stammered. "Why not? They say so."

"A man who slays bulls as he does," she said, "does not forget a woman
in a day."

Jose was lost in amazement.

"I thought you believed nothing but ill of him," he said. "What has
happened? You are angry--angry."

"It is not true about the girl from Lisbon," she said. "It is a lie they
amuse themselves with."

Never had innocent Jose been so thunderstruck. This was beyond his
understanding. He was afraid to speak, and kept looking sidewise at her
as he ate his soup; but she said no more.

"What has happened?" he said to himself over and over again. "Will she
not allow him to marry another, though she does not want him herself?"

Later he went out again. It must be confessed that he went in the
hope of seeing Sebastiano, or at least hearing of him. There was
no difficulty in hearing of him. In the wine-shops and at the street
corners he was being talked of in every group. Of what else could people
speak who knew he had returned? How there would be sport--how there
would be pleasure! Life began to wear a more vivacious aspect. And what
had he not done since he had left Madrid? Such success--such adulation!
The impression among his adorers was that the whole world had been at
his feet. He