When the deputy was alone in Madrid, as much at liberty as before his marriage, he could think of Leonora freely, without those restraints which seemed to disturb him back at home in the bosom of his family.  What could have become of her?  To what limits of mad frolic had she gone after that parting which even after years had passed, still brought a blush of shame to Rafael’s cheeks?  The Spanish papers paid very little attention to matters of foreign art.  Only twice in their columns did he discover Leonora’s stage name with an account of her new triumphs.  She had sung in Paris in French, with as much success as a native artiste.  The purity of her accent had surprised everyone.  In Rome she had played the “lead” in an opera by a young Italian composer, and her coming had been announced by press agents as a great event.  The opera had failed to please; not so the singer.  Her audience had been moved to tears by her execution of a scene in the last act, where she wept for a lost love.

After that—­silence, no news whatever!  She had disappeared.  A new love affair, Rafael supposed, a new outburst of that vehement passion which made her follow her chosen man like a slave.  And Rafael felt a flash of jealousy at the thought, as if he had rights over the woman still, as if he had forgotten the cruelty with which he had bidden her farewell.

That, fundamentally, had been the cause of all the bitterness and remorse in his life.  He understood now that Leonora had been his one genuine passion:  the love that comes to people once in a lifetime.  It had been within reach of his hand, and he had failed to grasp it, had frightened it away forever with a cowardly act of villany, a cruel farewell, the shame of which would go to the grave with him.  Garlanded in the orange-blossoms of the orchard, Love had passed before him, singing the Hymn of wild Youth that knows neither scruples nor ambition.  Love, true love had invited him to follow—­and he had answered with a stab—­in the back!  That love would never return, as he well knew.  That mysterious being with its smiles and with its frolics, goes forever when once it goes.  It knows no bartering with destiny.  It demands blind obedience and bids the lover take the woman who offers her hand, orchard-maid or prima donna as she may be.  The man who hesitates is lost.

And Rafael felt that an endless night had closed around him!  He found all his efforts to escape from his dullness and depression vain.  He could not shake off the senility that was creeping over his spirit.  Sadly he bowed to the conviction that another love like the first was impossible.

For two months he had been the lover of Cora, a popular girl of the private rooms of the Fornos, a tall, thin, strong Galician beauty—­as strong, alas, as the other.  Cora had spent a few months in Paris, and had returned thence with her hair bleached and a distinctly French manner of lifting her skirt as if she were strolling along the trottoir of the boulevards.  She had a sweet way of mixing French words in her conversation, calling everybody mon cher and pretending expertness in the organization of a supper.  At all events she shone like a great cocotte among her competitors, though her real asset was a line of risque stories, and a certain gift for low songs.