So the days went by, and election time came around.  Rafael, in passive rebellion against his mother, who rarely spoke a word to him now, had completely neglected the campaign.  But on the decisive Sunday he triumphed completely, and Rafael Brull, Deputy from Alcira, spent the night shaking hands, receiving congratulations, listening to serenades, waiting for morning to come that he might run to the Blue House and receive Leonora’s ironic good wishes.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” the actress said.  “Now you’ll be leaving very soon and I’ll lose sight of you.  It was high time really!  You know, my dear child, you were beginning to get tiresome with your assiduous worship, that mute, persistent, tenacious adoration of yours.  But up in Madrid you’ll get over it all.  Tut, tut, now ... don’t say you won’t.  No need to perjure yourself.  I guess I know what young men are like!  And you’re a young man.  The next time we meet, you’ll have other things in your head.  I’ll be a friend, just a friend; and that’s what—­and all—­I want to be.”

“But will I find you here when I come back?” Rafael asked, anxiously.

“You want to know more things than anybody I ever knew!  How can I say whether I’ll be here or not?  Nobody in the world was ever sure of holding me.  I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow myself....  But, no,” she continued, gravely, “if you come back by next spring, you’ll find me here.  I’m thinking of staying surely until then.  I want to see the orange-trees in bloom, go back to my early childhood—­the only memories of my past that have followed me everywhere.  Many a time I have gone to Nice, spending a fortune and crossing half the world to get there—­and just to see a handful of puny orange-trees in bloom; now I want to take one great, deep, plunge into the deluge of orange blossoms that inundates these fields every year.  It’s the one thing that keeps me in Alcira....  I’m sure.  So if you come back about that season, you will find me; and we will meet for one last time; for that will be the limit of my endurance.  I shall simply have to fly away, however hard poor auntie takes it....  For the present, however, I am quite comfortable.  You see I was so tired!  I find this solitude a welcome refuge after a stormy voyage.  Only something very important indeed could persuade me to leave it at once.”

But they saw each other on many another afternoon in the garden, there.  It was saturated now with the fragrance of ripe oranges.  The vast valley lay blue beneath the winter sun.  Oranges, oranges, everywhere, reaching out, it seemed, through the foliage, to the industrious hands that were plucking them from the branches.  Carts were creaking all along the roads, trundling heaps of golden fruit over the ruts.  The large shipping houses rang again with the voices of girls singing at their work as they selected and wrapped the oranges in paper.  Hammers were pounding at the wooden crates, and off toward France and England in great golden waves those daughters of the South rolled—­capsules of golden skin, filled with sweet juice—­the quintessence of Spanish sunshine.