on, pulled by the same wires that moved our
grandfathers and our ancestors. Be a man, and act according to your
own thoughts. You and I have different beliefs. Setting aside religion
which I know is a consolation to you, you know that I am silent as
to mine, so as not to render my life here impossible. But apart from
this, you believe that the family is a work of God, an institution of
supernatural origin. I believe it to be a human institution based
on the necessities of the species. You condemn for ever anyone who
betrays the laws of the family, or who deserts his banner, you
sentence him to death and oblivion. I pity his weakness and forgive.
We understand honour from a different point of view. You believe in
the Castillian honour--that traditional and barbarous honour, more
cruel and dismal even than dishonour; a theatrical honour, whose
impulses are never founded on human feeling, but on the fear of what
others will say, the desire to appear greater and more dignified in
the eyes of others than to your own conscience. For the adulterous
wife, death; for the murderer, revenge; for the fugitive daughter,
contempt and forgetfulness; this is your gospel. I have another
standard; for the wife who forgets her duties, contempt and oblivion;
for that fragment of our own flesh who flies from us, love, support,
gentleness, even endeavouring to compass her return to us. Esteban, we
are separated by our beliefs, the gulf of centuries lies between us,
but you are my brother, we love each other, and I only desire your
good. I bear the same name of which you are so proud, and I loved our
poor parents as much as you could love them, and in the name of all
these I tell you that this situation must come to an end; you must not
live insensible and frozen in what you call your dignity, without the
remembrance of your daughter wandering about the world, troubling you.
You, who are so kind, who have sheltered me in the most difficult
crisis of my life, how can you sleep, how can you eat, without your
life being embittered by the remembrance of your lost daughter? What
do you know about her now? May she not be dying of hunger while you
eat? May she not be lying in a hospital while you are living in the
home of your fathers?"

Esteban's brow contracted, and he wore his gloomiest look as he
listened to his brother.

"It is useless for you to strive, Gabriel, nothing can come of it.
Have I denied you anything? Am I not ready to do anythin