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Updated: May 9, 2025
"What are you doing, there?" cried Darlés, to whom every book was sacred. "Nothing," she answered. "It's a stupid novel. We ought to do the same with everything that bores us." Enrique sat down and asked: "Don Manuel ?" "He's been here a while, but he's gone. I mean, I sent him away. I tell you I'm unbearable, to-day. I'd like to fight with everybody.
Already she was beginning to consider this poor life of ours a grotesque affair this life in which so many men think themselves happy in the possession of the ten-millionth part of what they really want. It was almost seven o'clock when Enrique Darlés arrived. As soon as Alicia saw the student, she heaved a sigh of contentment and threw the book into the fire.
Now all of a sudden he beheld her transfigured, beside herself, her scatter-brained little head flung back in an attitude of giving, that offered the victorious playwright her snowy throat. Ethnological reasons underlie woman's adoration of everything strong, shining, violent. "If I were not here," thought Darlés with melancholy, "surely she would go to him."
The selfish frivolity of her disposition could not understand how any man, after having received the supreme gift from a woman, could do other than get tired of her. Darlés' note, complaining of her desertion of him, increased her annoyance. Once for all she felt she must cut this entanglement.
Alicia seemed to ponder. She peered at her friend. "Do you understand this?" asked she. "It's from Enrique Darlés. Remember him? A young chap Manuel's friend." Then she asked Teodora: "Who brought this?" "An old woman." "What kind of a looking woman?" "I don't know. Well she looked like a janitress." Alicia lacked decision how to act.
Darlés wanted to show this kind of heroism, which the adventurous soul of woman always admires. He was finding himself on a par with great criminals, with illustrious artists, with multimillionaires who wreck their fortunes in a single night, with every man who steps outside the common, beaten paths.
The first act was finished. Enrique Darlés went down to the foyer. His provincial curiosity drew him thither. He felt an eagerness to absorb the vast, motley spirit of the city. He wanted to behold many things, to school himself, strengthen himself with all these new impressions. Above all he wanted to feel the life-currents of Madrid beating about his migratory feet.
Something in the rather scornful familiarity of her greeting infinitely humbled him. He grew pale. All the blood in his body seemed flooding his heart, turning to ice there. Still discourteous, Alicia introduced him to the other girl: "Señor Darlés my friend, Candelas." Candelas fixed her keen, vivid eyes on the new-comer.
Cañamares ordered, in a free and easy way: "Landlady! Bring us a stew!" He was a big, young fellow, twenty, plump and full-blooded, vivacious with that healthy, turbulent kind of joviality which seems to diffuse vital energies all about it. He was very talkative; and in his picturesque and frivolous chatter lay a contagious good-humor. Darlés answered him only with distrait monosyllables.
Abashed, feeling himself wholly out of place, young Darlés self-consciously strolled over to look at a bust of Gayarre a bronze bust that showed the man with short, up-tossed hair. Its energy made one think of Othello. Quite at once, a hand dropped familiarly on Darlés' shoulder. The young man turned. "Don Manuel! You? What a surprise!"
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