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Candelas showed a brooch that had been given her. Clotilde offered the girls a necklace. "If you'd like to see it, I'll bring it," said she. "I've got it at home." Alicia sighed deeply; and that long sigh, broken like a child's, expressed enormous grief. She said: "I'm in love with a necklace in a shop on Calle Mayor, and I don't want any other. I dream about it all the time.
Candelas, kneeling beside the bed, wept and prayed. Alicia, more violent in disposition, caught Enrique by the shoulder. "Enrique!" she cried. "Enrique!" And for a moment she looked at him with one of those tragic, passionate expressions that sometimes explain the sacrifice of a life. The student could still whisper: "Remember !" This was his final word. His eyes drooped shut.
"Mine?" "Of course! Who made him steal, but you?" "I did? "Yes, you idiot!" In Candelas' voice quivered that envious anger felt by all women against any for whose sake a man has ruined himself. Then she added, more calmly: "It's lucky, anyhow, the janitress didn't see us coming up here." Alicia Pardo examined the necklace.
Then the two girls once more took up the thread of the conversation broken by the arrival of Darlés. The poor fellow sensed that he was isolated and dismissed. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, with no break in that animated chatter. Men's names came into it; and Candelas laughed heartily as she reviewed the details of a recent supper she had had. Alicia laughed, too.
He thought of Alicia, of his little room in the Calle de la Ballesta. He felt of his pockets. His fingers closed on the necklace "Her necklace!" The student smiled. Unspeakable joy soothed his troubled heart. He sighed, and wiped away a few tears. Alicia was his! The book of his life was written, was at an end. Candelas and Alicia were coming back in a landau from the race-track.
"Come, come, now," she exclaimed, "what a fool you are!" "I adore you, Alicia! Heart of my soul!" "Come now, be good! Keep quiet good-by! You're getting me into trouble!" "But I've got to see you see you!" "All right! Only do keep quiet! Good-by keep quiet, I tell you! Candelas might get wise to something, and I don't want her making fun of us!"
The spot-light brilliantly illuminated him; he smiled, with the arrogant expression and gestures of a conqueror. Still applauding, Alicia exclaimed to Enrique: "Isn't he lovely? I've got to get some one to introduce me to him. My friend Candelas knows him very well." And her big green eyes widened with emotion. Her curly reddish hair shook like a lion's mane, over her willful forehead.
He died quietly, with no bleeding at the lips. A whitish aura spread over his face. Alicia exclaimed: "Enrique! Can you hear me? Enrique!" She felt of his forehead, his hands. He was dead. "He's gone," said she. This too, in her way of thinking, was admirable. Came a pause. Candelas had got up, and now the two friends questioned each other with their eyes.
He had been found guilty of aiding and assisting one Pepe Candelas, a thief of no inconsiderable renown, in a desperate robbery perpetrated in open daylight upon no less a personage than the queen's milliner, a Frenchwoman, whom they bound in her own shop, from which they took goods and money to the amount of five or six thousand dollars.
The same idea, the same terror had just struck them both. Enrique's death would compromise them. The law would institute researches, and the girls might easily be called upon to testify. Instincts of self-preservation drove memories of the dead man from them. "We're in a terrible position," said Alicia. "It's all your fault. I didn't want to come." Angrily Candelas retorted: "It's your fault!"
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