After she had cut as many flowers as she wanted, she sat on a stone bench in the shade, and placing the basket by her side and taking out a ball of thread, proceeded, with great calmness, to make a nosegay. First she took a magnificent white tea-rose, and pulled off all its thorns, tying around it instead some leaves of althea. As she reached this stage in her operation, Ricardo made his appearance. Marta raised her head, hearing his steps, and quickly dropped it again, continuing her work.
"I have been hunting for you, Martita."
"What for?"
"Nothing ... only to see you.... Is that a little thing?"
"If that's all, it seems to me a very little thing; yes!"
"Perhaps you don't want me to see you?"
"I didn't say so ... but as it hasn't been twenty-four hours since you got home...."
"Well, at any rate I wanted to see you."
Marta said nothing, and kept on with her task, placing around the rose and in the althea three pansies. Ricardo also had changed a little since the last time that we saw him. His face had grown somewhat thinner, and in place of its ordinary expression of contentment had come another as of fatigue sometimes approximating to gloom and bitterness. Unquestionably he had not been very happy during the last months, and we know very well that he had no good reason for being. The perpetual struggle which he had to sustain with Maria's scruples, and the sincere or simulated coldness which he saw in her, caused a steady, dull discomfort which embittered his existence. The brief moments when he succeeded in talking with his beloved, instead of being brightened by the sweet expressions of love, were generally spent in bickerings and recriminations, or at least in long exhortations on one side and the other,—Ricardo trying to prove to Maria that her pious practices were an exaggeration incompatible with human nature; Maria urging Ricardo to abandon the frivolities of the world and enter upon the road of virtue, which is that of salvation.
After he had silently watched Marta's work a moment, he asked her,—