There was no hesitation in the girl’s voice—no quality of naïveté or assumed virginity. There was a cold knowledge of fatality and an inflexible acceptance. There was even the protective shroud of fanaticism; and Rio saw her, gentle, but receptively immune.
He thought of Martin. Martin would turn the picture of the Madonna upside down and go ahead.... Yes, he thought, Martin would take her and her sisters—and even old Agnes in the unplowed field. But he wasn’t Martin, thank God!... And for a second or two he repeated to himself, “Thank God! Thank God!”
“No,” he said. He knelt down and held the girl as though she were a child. He whispered something to her and she smiled at him. After a bit, he stood up and searched through all his pockets for coins. He found that it amounted to about ten dollars. He laid this with the other money.
The girl had put on her light dress and they stood for a second by the curtain. They stood looking at each other. Then Rio went out into the early twilight.
That evening the girl did not light the tiny kerosene lamp outside her curtained doorway.
As Rio started up the Street of Curtains Marius ran to him. The boy was chewing vigorously on a sandwich and in the hand in which he held the whip was a package. He gave it to Rio who found a similar sandwich within the package.
“Try it, sir mate,” he said. “It’s good, if you’re on the gamey-flavor side of things.”
Rio bit into the sandwich, found it tough and certainly on the gamey side, but made palatable with some lettuce and pepper sauce. It was refreshing to him; and he was glad to see the boy again; gladder still to leave, for awhile, the world of frangipani—a world which called and yet rebelled inevitably against him.
By this time lights were beginning to be seen along the Street, and a few brown girls began to call to Rio. One unusually persistent one followed them for several paces.
Marius stopped, turned round and said in Spanish, “Bah! How many times would you have a man break his back!”