"In this way," said he, with a knowing air—questioning himself to avoid a disillusion, if, which was possible, he was deceived—"if she expects me, she will throw me another flower; then I will buy a guitar, a mantle the colour of the wall, and I will come like a lover of the time of the Cid Campeador, by starlight, to tell her my love."
But, notwithstanding this mockery, which he addressed to himself as he wandered about, he was much more concerned in the matter than he was ready to confess, and every moment he was consulting his watch to see if the hour for his return was near.
Although we may not be in love—and certainly the painter only felt at this moment a curiosity which he could not explain; for it was impossible for him to entertain any other feeling for a person whom he did not know: nevertheless the unknown—the unforeseen, if you will—has an indefinable charm, and exerts a powerful attraction on certain excitable organisations, which induces them in a moment to build up suppositions which they are not slow to consider as realities, until the truth suddenly comes, as a drop of cold water thrown into a boiling fluid will in a moment stop the evaporation of steam.
When the painter thought the hour had arrived, he turned back towards home. Affecting, perhaps, a little too visibly—if anyone had had an interest in watching his movements and gestures—the manners of a man completely indifferent, he reached the Callejón de las Cruces, and soon arrived near the house.
Spite of himself, the young man felt that he was flushed; his heart beat rapidly, and he had a buzzing in his ears, as when the blood, suddenly excited, rushes to the head.
All of a sudden, he felt a pretty smart shock to his hat.
He briskly raised his head.
Sudden as had been his movement, he could see nothing; only he heard a slight noise as if a window had been cautiously closed.
Disappointed at this second and unsuccessful attempt to perceive the person who was thus interested in him, he remained for a moment motionless; then, recollecting the ridiculousness of his position in the middle of a street, and under the eyes of people who were, perhaps, watching him from behind a window blind, he resumed his apparent coolness and indifference, and looked on the ground about him for the object which had so suddenly struck him.
He soon perceived it two or three paces from him.