“Do I want him to be? What has that to do with it? I want to know if he is.”
“Do you mean does he want to marry her?”
“Marry her! Englishmen never think of marriage ... they just what you call ‘rag round’; they can’t even fall in love.”
Teresa scrutinised her for a few seconds, and then she said: “I believe you are furious with every man who doesn’t fall in love with one of your daughters;” and she suddenly remembered a remark of Concha’s made in a moment of intense irritation: “The Doña ought to keep a brothel—then she would be really happy.”
CHAPTER VI
1
That year winter was so mild as to be almost indistinguishable from spring. Imperceptibly, the sparse patches of snow, the hyacinthine patches of blue light lying in hollows of the hills, in wrinkles of the land, turned into small waxen leafless flowers, watching, waiting, in the grass.
By the beginning of February the song of the birds had begun; a symbol that to most hearts is almost Chinese, the symbol and its idea being so indistinguishable that it seems that it is Hope herself who is perched out there on the top of the trees, singing.