That morning, followed by an aged servant, and with all the gravity of an orphan who must busy herself with the affairs of her household and act as head of the home, Remedios had walked by Rafael twice.  She scarcely looked at him.  The submissive smile of the future slave with which she usually greeted him had disappeared.  She was quite pale, and her colorless lips were pressed tight together.  Without a doubt in the world she had seen him, from a distance, talking and laughing with “the chorus girl.”  His mother would know all about it within an hour!  Really, that young female seemed to think he was her private property!  And the angry expression on her face was that of a jealous wife taking notes for a curtain-lecture!

Scenting a danger Rafael took hasty leave of don Matias and his other friends, and left the market place to avoid another meeting with Remedios.  Leonora was still there.  He would wait for her on the road to the orchard.  He must take advantage of the early hour!

The orange country seemed to be quivering under the first kisses of spring.  The lithe poplars bordering the road were covered with tender leaves.  In the orchards the buds on the orange-trees, filling with the new sap, were ready to burst, as in one grand explosion of perfume, into white fragrant bloom.  In the matted herbage on the river-banks the first flowers were growing.  Rafael felt the cool caress of the sod as he sat down on the edge of the road.  How sweet everything smelled!  What a beautiful day it was!

The timorous, odorous violet must be sprouting on the damp ground yonder under the alders!  And he went looking along the stream for those little purple flowers that bring dreams of love with their fragrance!  He would make a bouquet to offer Leonora as she came by.

He felt thrilled with a boldness he had never known before.  His hands burned feverishly.  Perhaps it was the emotion from his own sense of daring.  He had resolved to settle things that very morning.  The fatuity of the man who feels himself ridiculous and is determined to raise himself in the eyes of his admirers, excited him, filling him with a cynical rashness.

What would his friends, who envied him as Leonora’s lover, say if they knew she was treating him as an insignificant friend, a good little boy who helped her while away the hours in the solitude of her voluntary exile?

A few kisses—­on her hand; a few kind words; many many cruel jests, such as come from a chum conscious of superiority ... that was all he had won after months and months and months of assiduous courtship, months of disobedience to his mother, in whose house he had been living like a stranger, without affection, at daggers’ points; months of exposure to the criticism of his enemies, who suspected him of a liaison with the “chorus girl” and were raising their brows, horror-stricken, in the name of morality.  How they would scoff, if they knew the truth!  Those addlepates down at the Club were always boasting of their amorous adventures, which began inevitably with the sudden physical attack and ended in easy triumph.