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. Here and there one could hear s.n.a.t.c.hes of song of which his name was the refrain. It was only because he so loved his own people that he had refused the magnificent offers made by the King of America.

He had refused them; he had chosen to remain in Spain. He had come to Madrid. Soon he would appear before them again. He had even gained in strength and dexterity; and as to his good looks--ah! what a dashing, handsome fellow!

Jose had the good luck to see him again, even to speak to him. What fortune--what happiness! The honest fellow felt himself overjoyed. They were to be friends again.

It was quite late when he found himself walking homeward over the white road again. He had drunk wine enough to make him feel quite gay; and as he went he sang now and then a verse of a song about the joys of the bull-fight.

When he was about half-way home he thought he heard behind him the sound of rapid feet--light feet running. He stopped and looked back. What was it he saw, or thought he saw? Was it a small dark shape which flitted instantly into the shadow of the trees? It looked like a woman who did not wish to be seen. Well, he would not look, then. What was the use of giving her trouble? He tramped on, perhaps a little more slowly. It was late for a woman to be out on the lonely road alone. It must be past midnight. Then the thought came to him that perhaps she wished to pa.s.s him. In that case he might look the other way, on the opposite side of the road. In fact, he crossed to the other side to leave the way clear, and went on good-naturedly, singing his song loudly and all out of tune. Yes, he had been right. Soon the footsteps drew nearer; the shadow within the shadow slipped past--ran swiftly. But by that time they were nearing his home, and there was a stretch of road unshaded by anything.

The shadow hesitated, darted across the white s.p.a.ce, and Jose, seeing it in the full light, uttered a cry, and started in pursuit. In but a few moments he had reached it and held it by the arm, feeling all the slender body breathless and panting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The slender body breathless and panting 147]

"Pepita!" he cried. "It is you?"

She let the mantilla drop from her face and stood and looked at him.

"Yes," she answered, "it is Pepita; and you need not ask--I will not tell you. I have been to--to look at something--and I will tell you nothing."

He put his hand up and rubbed his forehead violently. Then he let it drop.

"I shall not ask," he said. "You would do no wrong. You are a good girl; but--"

"You think I have gone mad," she said, with a sudden change of voice and a piteous little shiver. "Who knows? Perhaps some one has cast the evil-eye upon me. But I have done no harm, and I shall do none."

"No," he said, rather stupidly. "You would do no harm. Let us go in, then."

And without another word they went into the house, Pepita to her bed to be awake and gaze at the darkness, Jose to sit with his head in his hands and thinking a thousand wild thoughts until he fell asleep.

He could not know that where he had been she had been also; that when the s.n.a.t.c.hes of song had been sung she had heard them; that when the people had talked of Sebastiano she had listened; that when Sebastiano had stood in the bright light she had stood in the shadow and watched.

She had not thought of danger or of being discovered. She had only thought of one thing and listened for one thing--and once she had heard this thing discussed by some chattering young chulos.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She is a pretty young girl 151]

"She is a pretty young girl," they said. "Not as pretty as that other, but handsome enough. She was a little devil, that other. But it is a mistake for a man like him to marry. How can a man feel free to risk his life gayly when he has a woman hung about his neck?"

"He will not," she whispered, growing hot all over. "No, he has not forgotten. I have given the little heart and the flowers and candles.

And he could not forget while I--He will come back."

She struggled with the pa.s.sionate persistence of a child. Since she would not give him up, he was hers.

But she did not know what to do. There was nothing but to wait in this fever of strange misery and unrest, which grew more cruel every day; and at the bull-fight if he would only look--perhaps--yes, if he saw her face, he would understand and come.

In the days before the great entertainment took place she was like some little savage creature at bay. She could scarcely bear to hear the voices of those who spoke to her. Once she went into the church and threw herself upon her knees as usual, but when she looked up her eyes were fierce.

"If he does not come," she cried to the waxen Virgin, "I will pray to you no more--no more."

She knew that it was blasphemy, but she did not care; and before she went home she bought a sharp little knife and hid it in her breast.

"This," she 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 pa.s.sed 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-gla.s.s 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 call for Sebas-tiano. "Sebastiano!

Sebastiano!" on every side--even the grand ladies and their cavaliers clapping their hands and calling also. The beauties in the high places were always ready to see him come, and to give him a welcome when he risked his life to amuse them.

He stepped forth in his rich dress and with his gallant bearing, a more beautiful and gay figure than ever, it seemed the excited people thought. He had grown finer, without doubt, they said. His face was a little pale, but that only made more beautiful his long dark eyes, under their dense, straight, black lashes. It was the women who said this, and who saw the richness of his dress, the colors of his _devisa_, the close curl of his crisp hair, the grace of his movement. The men saw his superb limbs, his firm step, his quick glance, his bright sword.