But slow as he was, he could not help seeing in time that something was wrong with Pepita. Sometimes she scarcely talked at all, and she did not flame up when Jovita grumbled; it seemed as if she scarcely heard. Her eyes had grown bigger, too, and there was a burning light in them. They always appeared to be asking something; often he found himself obliged to look up, and saw them fixed upon him, as if they meant to wrest something from him. The careless bird-like look had gone, the careless bird-like laughter and mocking. He began gradually to fancy she was always thinking of something that hurt and excited her. But then there was nothing. She had all she wanted. She had as many trinkets as the other girls; she had even more. She had so little work to do that she had sought some outside her home to fill her spare moments, and she loved no one. There was not a man she knew who would not have come if she had smiled. What, then, could it be? And how pretty she was! Prettier than ever; prettier because of the burning look in her eyes, and—and something else he could not explain; a kind of restless grace of movement, as if she was always on the alert.
“Are you not pleased with Madrid any longer?” he asked her once.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Do you want anything?”
“No.”
“It seems to me,” he said, slowly, and with much caution, “that you do not amuse yourself as you did at first.”
“It is not so new,” she said; “but there is still pleasure enough.” And for a moment she kept her great eager eyes fixed upon him, and then she moved slowly toward him and touched him with a soft touch on his big clumsy shoulder and said: “You are a good brother! You are a good brother!”
“I have always loved you,” he said, with simple pride. “When we were children, you know I always promised that you should see better days.”
She had forgotten to count the weeks and days, or to take note of the changing seasons, when one hot day in the early summer he came in—José—with an innocent joy in his face.
He looked questioningly at Pepita two or three times and then coughed.