“There is one thing I can do,” she thought, and lit the candle. “I’ll leave to-morrow. Never will I go through this again, and never will I see him again if I can help it.”
She had the instinct of all wounded things, and a terror of the emotions that had torn her. Pain she could stand, and had a dim foreshadowing that in solitude she might attain that dignity of soul that sorrow and meditation bring to great natures, but never the passionate conflict of emotions that confused her now. As she locked her trunk there was a knock on her door. She answered mechanically, and Mrs. Rothe entered.
“What—”
Catalina, who was sitting on the floor, sprang to her feet. Her hair was disordered and her eyes red. There was no use attempting to conceal anything from this keen-eyed woman, whose sufferings were stamped in the loosened muscles of her face. She stood silent and haughty. She would deny nothing, but nothing was further from her mind than confession.
“May I sit down?” asked Mrs. Rothe. “Have you a headache? I was afraid you must have, as you did not come down.”
“My head doesn’t ache, but I am sick of Spain. I am going to start for home to-morrow.”
“Oh, I am sorry. It will be dreary without you. And I thought it so enchanting here. Can’t I induce you to change your mind?”
Catalina sat down on her trunk, but she shook her head. “I want to go home,” she said.
Mrs. Rothe turned her kind, bitter eyes full upon Catalina. “Don’t run away,” she said. “It is unworthy of you. And this means nothing. What is more natural—he being a man—than that he should accept the minor offerings of the gods when the best is not forthcoming? Moreover, when a man has talked steadily to one girl for three weeks”—she shrugged her shoulders—“that is the way they are made, my dear, the way we are all made, for that matter, as you will discover in time for yourself. It is better to accept men as they are, and early than late.”
“I never want to see another man again—and this was our first night in Granada. There was—had been for weeks—a tacit understanding that we should do every bit of it together—”