At last, in a very deserted spot, they bid the driver stop, and got out.
"Wait for us here; we are going for a little walk," Raimundo explained.
But then observing a doubtful glance in the man's eyes, he turned back when he had gone a few steps, and taking out a five-dollar note he handed it to him saying:
"You can give me the change presently."
They turned off from the high road and wandered away over the dreary deserted fields which stretch away to the east of Madrid. The ground is slightly undulating, but burnt and barren, cutting the horizon with a long level line—not a house, not a tree was in sight. Clementina's dainty shoes sank in the dust as they walked on in silence. Raimundo had no spirit to talk, and she, too, was oppressed by the sadness of the little drama, to which that of the landscape contributed; she had enough good feeling not to speak a word. Now and then she looked back to assure herself whether they could still be seen from the high road. When she thought they had gone far enough she stopped.
"Why should we go any further?" she said. "Will not this place do?"
Raimundo also stopped, but made no answer. He dropped the parcel on the ground and looked away—far away to the horizon. Clementina untied it, looked with some curiosity at her letters, all carefully preserved in the envelopes; then she made a little heap of them, and after waiting a minute or two for Raimundo to look round, finding that he did not move, she said:
"Give me a match."
The young man obeyed, and gave it her lighted, in perfect silence. Then he looked away again while Clementina set fire to the papers, and watched them burn one by one. The process took some minutes, and she had to turn the blazing fragments with her gloved hands to prevent their remaining half-burnt. Now and then she cast a half uneasy, half pitying glance at her lover, who stood as motionless and absorbed as a sailor studying the signs of the weather.
When nothing remained but black ashes, Clementina rose from her stooping posture, waited a moment, not liking to intrude on Raimundo's deep abstraction, and at last, with a cloud of tender pathos on her beautiful face, hastily looked about her, went up to him, and laying her arm on his shoulder, said in a fond tone: