"Do you remember the jeweler's shop on the right, on the even-numbered side, near the Puerta del Sol?"
"Well, if you like jewels," continued Alicia, "take a look at that emerald necklace in the middle of the window. I just happened to see it, to-day, and it made such an impression on me that I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. It's magnificent, not only in size and in the wonderful luster of the stone, but also on account of its splendid clasp."
"Worth a lot, eh?"
"Fifteen thousand pesetas."
Darlés said nothing to this. But his brows lifted with admiration. Such figures filled his provincial simplicity with panic and confusion. By comparison with the miserable shallowness of his purse, they seemed enormous. Little Goldie continued:
"I told Don Manuel about it, but he's a clever fox. He's a sly one! There's no way in this world to rake him into spending any extra money. That's partly what we've just now been quarreling about. Believe me, it's men's own fault if we aren't more faithful to them."
Ignorant as he was of feminine psychology, Enrique understood that Alicia's black humor was on account of that emerald necklace she so deeply admired and so greatly wanted. Unsatisfied desires are like undigested foods. At first they cause us a vague ill-ease, which soon increases until indigestion sets in. Following this same line of thought, is not disappointment or grief, in a way, the indigestion of a caprice? Ingenuously, without realizing the indiscretion of promising anything to women or children, Enrique exclaimed:
"If I were only rich—!"
The pause that followed was like that in a romance; one of those silences during which women decide to do any and everything. Then all at once, with the same bored gesture she had used when she had tossed the book into the fire, Alicia put one of her little hands into the bony, trembling hands of the student.