“Very well, tomorrow it is. But did you two leave the Paseo on my account?”
“No,” replied Rafaela, “I don’t like to drive in that line for very long at a time. It makes my head swim. We are on our way home, now. Adiós, Quentin.”
“Adiós!”
Quentin took the mountain road, and trotted his horse as far as the Brillante lunch-room.
The encounter had given rise to a mixture of sadness and irony within him, which seemed as distressing as it did grotesque to him.
“Is there anything of special significance about it?” he asked himself.
No, there was nothing of special significance about it. It was the logical thing. She had married; her husband was young; she was going to have a child. It was the natural course of events; and yet, Quentin wondered at her.
We often see strange birds flying in the heavens. They are like men’s illusions. Sometimes these birds fall, wounded by some hunter, and when one sees them upon the ground with their sad eyes, their white feathers,—they are a surprise to whomsoever contemplates them.... It is because man idealizes all distant objects.
Quentin, dominated by his half-dolorous, half-grotesque impressions, returned slowly to the town.
When he reached the Paseo de la Victoria, night had already fallen. The line of carriages was still filing past. The mountain was wrapped in a mist; the sun was sinking over the distant meadows, its great, red disk hiding itself behind the yellow fields; a bluish hill surmounted by a castle stood out in silhouette against the rosy-tinted horizon.