"I mean the shame and disgrace of it. I can't endure staying here seeing you continually disgraced in your own home by one stray woman after another!"
The señora stared.
"Señor, do you fancy I want it to be different?"
The drummer was astonished.
"You don't! Do you mean you condone such offense? Do you mean?..."
The señora's black eyes grew moist at the reproach in his voice.
"Dear Señor Tomas, that is something you do not understand. You don't know how glad I am to be free of him—such a brute! Oh, señor, you can't imagine how horrible it was—the very sight of him. It seemed to me I could not endure it another day. A murderer, a robber...." The expression on her face moved the drummer. "At last I went to Father Benicio. I told him I would jump in the river and let the caymans eat me rather than ... continue."
Strawbridge was trembling as if he himself had been tormented; yet how much of this was from sympathy, and how much from this heady topic of sex which had suddenly sprung up between them, the youth himself had not the faintest idea.
"And what did he do? What did Father Benicio say?"