Pepa had clasped her hands to stop the beating of her heart.
“Because when your brother-in-law, Luis Gonzaga, who is preparing to be a missionary, begins to preach on one side, and you begin to utter heresies on the other, you will be a match for each other. Leon, I tell you plainly, you are an insufferable prig and your learning makes me sick.”
“But I happen to know that your real opinion of me is a more flattering one.”
Pepa leaned out over the balcony and Leon felt her breath on his face; it seemed to scorch him like a passing flame.
“A man who has studied nothing but stones is an idiot,” said Pepa with a bitter accent.
“There I agree with you—Come, dear Pepa, be friends with a man who has a true and frank regard for you. Give me your hand.”
Pepa started to her feet.
“Give me your hand and say good-bye. Do you not feel in your heart that some day you will want me—perhaps to give you some honest advice, perhaps even some help, such as mortals must ask of each other in the shipwrecks of life.”
Pepa angrily flung away the spray she still held, and it struck Leon on the forehead. He started as if he had been lashed with a whip.
“I—want you!” she exclaimed. “What conceit! Upon my word you must have lost your senses. It is more likely that I shall one day meet a pompous prig with a simpleton on his arm and ask: ‘Pray who is this?’—say good-bye?—Good-bye; and whether it is till to-morrow or for all eternity, it is all the same to me.”