“You don’t believe out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said Carlota bitterly.
“Why Carlota, the babes and sucklings don’t get much chance. Their mothers and their teachers turn them into little gramaphones from the first, so what can they do, but say and feel according to the record the mother and teacher puts into them. Perhaps in the time of Christ, babes and sucklings were not so perfectly exploited by their elders.”
Suddenly, however, the smile went off his face. He rose up, and pointed to the door.
“Go away,” he said in a low tone. “Go away! I have smelt the smell of your spirit long enough.”
She sat on the bed, spell-bound, gazing at him with frightened, yet obstinate, insolent eyes, wincing from his outstretched arm as if he had threatened to strike her.
Then again the fire went out of his eyes, and his arm sank. The still, far-away look came on his face.
“What have I to do with it!” he murmured softly.
And taking up his blouse and his hat, he went silently out on to the terrace, departing from her in body and in soul. She heard the soft swish of his sandals. She heard the faint resonance of the iron door to the terrace, to which he alone had access. And she sat like a heap of ash on his bed, ashes to ashes, burnt out, with only the coals of her will still smouldering.
Her eyes were very bright, as she went to join Kate and Cipriano.
After breakfast, Kate was rowed home down the lake. She felt a curious depression at leaving the hacienda: as if, for her, life now was there, and not anywhere else.