“Very well; keep on coming, if you really want to; but all the same, it shows how people feel toward me—­a declaration of war, virtually.  And if I should ever fall in love with you ... heavens!  What would they say then?  They’d be sure I had come here for the sole purpose of capturing their don Rafael!  You can see how far such a thing is from my mind.  It would be the end of the peace and quiet I came here to find.  If they talk that way now, when I’m as innocent as a lamb, imagine how their tongues would wag then!...  No, I’m not looking for excitement!  Let them snap at me as much as they please; but I mustn’t be to blame.  It must be out of pure envy on their part.  I wouldn’t stoop to provoking them!”

And with a turn of her head in the direction of the city that was hidden from view behind the rows of orange-trees, she laughed disdainfully.

Then her gleeful frankness returned once more—­a candor of which she was always ready to make herself the first victim—­and in a low, confidential, affectionate tone she continued: 

“Besides, Rafaelito, you haven’t had a good look at me.  Why, I’m almost an old woman!...  Oh, I know it, I know it.  You don’t have to tell me.  You and I are of the same age; but you are a man; and I’m a woman.  And the way I’ve lived has added considerably to my years.  You are still on the very threshold of life.  I’ve been knocking about the world since I was sixteen, from one theatre to another.  And my accursed disposition, my mania for concealing nothing, for refusing to lie, has helped make me worse than I really am.  I have many enemies in this world who are just gloating, I am sure, because I have suddenly disappeared.  You can’t advance a step on the stage without rousing the jealousy of someone; and that kind of jealousy is the most bloodthirsty of human passions.  Can you imagine what my kind colleagues say about me?  That I’ve gotten along as a woman of the demimonde rather than as an artist—­that I’m a cocotte, using my voice and the stage for soliciting, as it were.”

“Damn the liars!” cried Rafael hotly.  “I’d like to have someone say that in my hearing.”

“Bah!  Don’t be a child.  Liars, yes, but what they say has a grain of truth in it.  I have been something of the sort, really; though the blame had not been wholly mine ...  I’ve done crazy foolish things—­giving a loose rein to my whims, for the fun of the thing.  Sometimes it would be wealth, magnificence, luxury; then again bravery; then again just plain, ordinary, good looks!  And I would be off the moment the excitement, the novelty, was gone, without a thought for the desperation of my lovers at finding their dreams shattered.  And from all this wild career of mine—­it has taken in a good part of Europe—­I have come to one conclusion:  either that what the poets call love is a lie, a pleasant lie, if you wish; or else that I was not born to love, that I am immune; for as I go back over my exciting and variegated past, I have to recognize that in my life love has not amounted to this!”