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The morning he took leave of his wife, she asked him: "Which engine have you got, to-day?" "Nigger," he answered. "My, what bad luck! I'm afraid something's going to happen to you!" "Rubbish! Why should it? I can handle her!" He kissed Rafaela, tenderly pressing her against his big, strong breast.
This mutual liking, which was at first impersonal and calm, finally grew in the shoemaker's heart till it became the fire of love. "If you were only willing," Señor Benjamin often said to Rafaela, "we could come to an understanding. You're all alone. So am I. Well, why not live together?" She smiled, with that disillusion which comes to a soul that life has bit by bit ravaged of all its dreams.
He never let anything find its way into them which might remind Rafaela of her fault. In these pages, filled with a strong, even writing, there was neither reproach, dejection, nor despairing impatience. They seemed to be the admirable reflection of an iron will which had been taught by misfortune the most excellent mother of all knowledge to understand the dour secret of hoping and of waiting.
But, anyhow, they cut five years off my time. So there are only six years more between us." Regularly the letters came and went between Rafaela and the prisoner at Ceuta. Two years more drew to their close. But evil fortune had not yet grown weary of stamping its heel on Amadeo Zureda's honest shoulders.
During the monotonous passage of a few more days, Manolo Berlanga gradually realized that Rafaela had big, expressive eyes, small feet with high insteps and a most pleasant walk. He noted that her breasts were firm and full; and he even thought he could detect in her an extremely coquettish desire to appear attractive in his eyes.
But this familiarity seemed quite brother-and-sisterly; it seemed justified by the three years they had been living in the same house, and could hardly be suspected of hiding any guilty secret. The notion kept growing in Zureda; it became an obsession which made him see the dreaded vision constantly, just as through another obsession, Berlanga's desire for Rafaela had been born.
The hotels in peninsular Spain are dirty enough to disgust any one, but those of Havana are a degree worse in this respect. Any of our readers who have chanced in their travels upon the Fonda de Rafaela, for instance, at Burgos, in Spain, will understand us fully.
"His keen insight into the needs of this western outpost and his determined efforts for the best interests of California will forever place him in the front rank of its rulers. I wonder if his young wife, Rafaela, is buried here also?" I drew aside the tangled vines from the near-by headstones.
"Please forgive me, dear Rafaela," the prisoner wrote again, after a while, "the new sorrow I must cause you. But by the life of our son I swear I could not avoid the misfortune which most expectedly is going to prolong our separation, for I don't know how long. "As you may guess, there are few saints among the rough crowd here, that are scraped up from all the prisons in Spain.
Jack stood upright, and communicated to the impatient Rafaela what his father had said. She had been unable to hear. Fortunately, he carried an electric torch. Swinging this so that the light fell on the steps, he started downward. Before he had gone three steps, the girl's quick eyes saw the key gleam in the light.
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