In that blue house he had found only frank, disinterested friendship,—­a somewhat ironic comradeship, the condescending tolerance of a person compelled by solitude to choose as her comrade the least repulsive among a host of inferiors.  Alas!  How clearly he remembered and could again foresee the sceptical, cold smile with which his words were always received, though he was sure he had crammed them with burning passion!  What a laugh she had given,—­as insolent and as cutting as a lash,—­the day he had dared to declare his love!

“Now the soft-pedal on slush, eh, Rafaelito?...  If you want us to go on being friends, all right, but it’s on condition you treat me as a man.  Comrades, eh, and nothing more.”

And with a look at him through those green, luminous, devilish eyes of hers, she had taken her seat at the piano and begun one of her divine songs, as if she thought the magic of her art might raise a barrier between them.

On another occasion, she was irritable rather; Rafael’s appealing eyes, his words of amorous adoration, seemed to provoke her, and she had said with brutal frankness: 

“Don’t waste your breath, please!  I am through with love.  I know men too well!  But even if anyone were to upset me again, it would not be you, Rafaelito dear.”

And yet he had persisted, insensible to the irony and the scorn of this terrible amigo in skirts, and indifferent as well to the conflicts that his blind passion might provoke at home if his mother knew.

He tried to free himself from his infatuation, but unsuccessfully.  With that in view he fixed his attention on the woman’s past; it was said that despite her beauty, her aristrocratic manners, the brilliancy of mind with which she had dazzled him—­a poor country boy—­she was only an adventuress who had made her way over half the globe from one pair of arms to another.  Well, in that case, it would be a great exploit to win a woman whom princes and celebrated men had loved!  But since that was impossible, why go on, why continue endangering his career and having trouble with his mother all the time?

To forget her, he stressed, before his own mind, words and attitudes of hers that might be judged defects; and he would taste the joy of duty well done when, after such gymnastics of the will, he could think of her without great emotion.

At the beginning of his life in Madrid he imagined he had recovered.  New surroundings; continuous and petty satisfactions to vanity; the kow-towing of doorkeepers in Congress; the flattery of visitors from here, there and everywhere who came with requests for passes to admit them to the galleries; the sense of being treated as a comrade by celebrities, whose names his father had always mentioned with bated breath; the “honorable” always written before his name; all Alcira speaking to him with affectionate familiarity; this rubbing elbows, on the benches of the conservative majority, with a battalion of dukes, counts and marquises—­young men who had become deputies to round out the distinction conferred by beautiful sweethearts or winning thoroughbreds,—­all this had intoxicated him, filled his mind completely, crowding out all other thoughts, and persuading him that he had been completely cured.