"As she saw me follow with attentive glance all the details of her extravagant array, she thought that I was admiring her, and threw her head back with a petulant expression.
"And such a simple creature!... She hadn't yet become acquainted with the customs of the house, and told the truth,—all the truth—to the men who wished to know her history. They called her Flora; but her real name was Mari-Pepa. She wasn't the orphan of a colonel or a magistrate, nor did she concoct the complicated tales of love and adventure that her companions did, in order to justify their presence in such a place. The truth; always the truth; she would yet be hanged for her frankness. Her parents were comfortably situated farmers in a little town of Aragón; owned their fields, had two mules in the barn, bread, wine, and enough potatoes for the year round; and at night the best fellows in the place came one after the other to soften her heart with serenade upon serenade, trying to carry off her dark, healthy person together with the four orchards she had inherited from her grandfather.
"'But what could you expect, my dear fellow?... I couldn't bear those people. They were too coarse for me. I was born to be a lady. And tell me, why can't I be? Don't I look as good as any of them?...'
"And she snuggled her head against my shoulder, like the docile sweetheart she was,—a slave subjected to all sorts of caprices in exchange for being clothed handsomely.
"' Those fellows,' she continued, 'made me sick. I ran off with the student,—understand?—the son of the town magistrate, and we wandered about until he deserted me, and I landed here, waiting for something better to turn up. You see, it's a short tale.... I don't complain of anything. I'm satisfied.'
"And to show how happy she was, the unhappy girl rode astride my legs, thrust her hard fingers through my hair, rumpling it, and sang a tango in horrible fashion, in her strong, peasant voice.
"I confess that I was seized with an impulse to speak to her 'in the name of morality,'—that hypocritical desire we all possess to propagate virtue when we are sated and desire is dead.
"She raised her eyes, astonished to see me look so solemn, preaching to her, like a missionary glorifying chastity with a prostitute on his knees; her gaze wandered continually from my austere countenance to the bed close by. Her common sense was baffled before the incongruity between such virtue and the excesses of a moment before.
"Suddenly she seemed to understand, and an outburst of laughter swelled her fleshy neck.
"'The deuce!... How amusing you are! And with what a face you say all these things! Just like the priest of my home town....'