He walked quietly to the corner of the room, where Xantippe sat nursing the boy, touched the child gently on the forehead with his lips, and then went out.

For some minutes neither Xantippe nor Gregorio spoke, but the man rubbed the infant’s forehead with his finger as if to wipe out the stain of the Jew’s kiss.

VII—­XANTIPPE SPEAKS OUT

At last the silence, roused only by the strident buzzing of the mosquitos, became unendurable.  Gregorio gave a preparatory cough and opened his lips to speak, but the words refused to be born.  He was unnerved.  The odious visitor, the wearying day, the memory of Xantippe’s face at the window, combined to make him fearful.  He watched, under his half-closed lids, his wife crouching on the far side of the boy.  Once or twice, as he was rubbing the youngster’s forehead, his fingers touched those of his wife as she waved off the mosquitos; but at each contact with them he shivered and his fears increased.  He tried, vainly, to get his thoughts straight, and lit a cigarette with apparent calmness, swaggering to the window; but his legs did not cease to tremble, and the unsteadiness of his gait caused Xantippe to smile as she watched him.  Resting by the window, Gregorio widened the lips of the lattice and let in a stream of moonbeams that rested on wife and child, illumining the dark corner.

“Gregorio!”

“Yes.”

“Have you told me all?  Is there nothing else to tell em about our son and the Jew?”

Gregorio felt he must now speak; it was not possible to keep silence longer.  He was pleased that his wife had begun the conversation, for it seemed easier to answer questions than to frame them.  “I have told you the whole story.  There is no more to tell.  It was by accident I found him in the bazaar, and that devil Amos was bending over him.  I could kill that man.”

“What good would that do?”

“Fancy if we had lost the boy!  Think of the sacrifices we have made for him, and they would have been useless.”

“Have you made any sacrifices, Gregorio?”

The question was quietly asked, but there was a ring of irony in the sound of the voice, and Gregorio, to shun his wife’s gaze, moved into the friendly shadows.  For some minutes he did not answer.  At length, with a nervous laugh, he replied: 

“Of course.  We have both made sacrifices, great sacrifices.”

“It is odd,” pursued Xantippe, gently, as if speaking to herself, “that you should so flatter yourself.  You professed to care for me once; you only regard me now as a slave to earn money for you.”

“It is for our son’s sake.”

“Is it for our son’s sake also that you sit with Madam Marx, that you drink her wine, that you kiss her?”

Gregorio could not answer.  He felt it were useless to try and explain, though the reason seemed to him clear enough.