She looked at the torero with commiserating eyes, as if she suddenly saw all his defects and roughness.
"I think things that you could not understand," she went on. "You seem to me different. The Gallardo in Seville was not the same as the one here. Are you the same?... I cannot doubt it, but to me you are different.... How can this be explained?..."
She looked through the window at the dull rainy sky, at the wet Plaza, at the flakes of snow, and then she turned her eyes on the espada, looking with astonishment at the long lock of hair plastered on his head, at his clothes, his hat, at all the details which betrayed his profession, which contrasted so strongly with his smart and modern dress.
To Doña Sol the torero seemed out of his element. Down in Seville Gallardo was a hero, the spontaneous product of a cattle-breeding country; here he seemed like an actor. How had she been able for many months to feel love for that rough, coarse man. Ay! the surrounding atmosphere! To what follies it drove one!
She remembered the danger in which she found herself, so nearly perishing beneath the bull's horns; she thought of that breakfast with the bandit, to whom she had listened stupefied with admiration, ending by giving him a flower. What follies! And how far off it all now seemed!
Of that past nothing remained but that man, standing motionless before her, with his imploring eyes, and his childish desire to revive those days.... Poor man! As if follies could be repeated when one's thoughts were cold and the illusion wanting. The blind enchantment of life!
"It is all over," said the lady. "We must forget the past, for when we see it a second time it does not present itself in the same colours. What would I give to have my former eyes?... When I returned to Spain it seemed to me changed. You also are different from what I knew you. It even seemed to me, seeing you in the Plaza, that you were less daring ... that the people were less enthusiastic."
She said this quite simply, without a trace of malice, but Gallardo thought there was mocking in her voice, and bent his head, while his cheeks coloured.
Curse it! All his professional anxieties arose again in his mind. All the evil which was happening to him was because he did not now throw himself on the bulls. That is what she so clearly said, she saw him "as if he were another." If he could only be the Gallardo of former days, perhaps she would receive him better. Women only love brave man.
But he was mistaken, taking what was a caprice dead for ever, to be a momentary straying, that he could recall by strength and prowess.