"Be sensible; it isn't the time to give one a cold.... Now it seems to me all right.... Uf! how cold this water is!... It isn't noticeable on the hands, but on your arms! Look! Look how it jumps up!... If you put your palm flat against the current, it runs clear up your arm. Don't you see how beautiful and clear it is to-day?"
"Speaking frankly, I will tell you," whispered the engineer in Amparo's ear, "that at this moment my attention is attracted more by your fair arm!"
"If you don't hush, you rogue, I shall spatter the water in your face," replied the girl, threatening him with her chaste vengeance.
"Though you should throw me into the river, I should still say so.... I am an artist, above all things, as you well know.... There is nothing so beautiful as the human form, ... when it is beautiful; and that arm of yours stands comparison with the most perfect models of the sculptor's art."
"Come, come! don't be absurd!... My arm is like any one else's. The main thing is, that it is beginning to feel cold.... Whew! what water.[46] It seemed so warm at first!... And how it keeps on growing colder and colder, till at last it chills one to the bone!..."
"Take it out, take it out ... we must dry it!"
And Amparito obeyed, taking her arm out of the water, and innocently holding it towards the engineer, who began to wipe it with his handkerchief, lavishing upon it delicate attentions, and saying, at the same time:—
"But what a lovely arm you have, Amparito! How white! what soft skin! and how round it is, above all!... A woman's arm ought to be so, ... round and slender, like that of the Venus di Medici ... the arm ought to diminish gradually and symmetrically to the wrist.... The truth is, with such an arm you ought to be worthy of being a sculptor's model.... Well-formed women are scarce enough nowadays. To this is due the decay of sculpture, according to some critics.... If there were many like you, this certainly could not be said.... What an arm! what a lovely arm!... You can't imagine the pleasure I feel in touching it with my hand...."
The engineer, as he said this, suited the action to the word, and rubbed it so hard that Señor de Ciudad, who, with grim eyes, was watching the operation from the bow, could not help exclaiming, in an angry tone,—
"Amparo, please pull down your sleeve.... You most foolish girl!"