Gallardo devoured her with his eyes, inspecting her with the exactitude of one who knew her well and did not forget details.
Just as she was in Seville! No—more beautiful, if possible, with the added temptation of a long absence.
She presented herself in elegant abandon, wearing an odd costume with strange jewels, as he first saw her in her house in Seville. Her feet were thrust into slippers covered with heavy gold embroideries which, when she sat down and crossed her limbs, hung loose, ready to fall off her pointed toes. She extended him her hand, smiling with amiable frigidity.
"How are you, Gallardo? I knew you were in Madrid. I have seen you."
You! She no longer used the thou of the great lady, to which he had responded with respectful courtesy as her lover in a class beneath. This you that seemed to put them on a level drove the swordsman to despair. He wished to be a kind of serf, elevated by love to the great lady's arms, and he found himself treated with the cold and courteous consideration which an ordinary friend inspires.
She explained that she had attended the only bull-fight Gallardo had given in Madrid and had seen him there. She had gone to see the bulls with a foreigner who desired a glimpse of things Spanish; a friend who accompanied her on her travels but who lived in another hotel.
Gallardo responded to this with an affirmative movement of the head. He remembered the foreigner; he had seen him with her.
The two fell into a long silence, not knowing what to say. Doña Sol was the first to break the pause.
She found the bull-fighter looking well; she vaguely recollected about a great wound he had received; she was almost certain of having telegraphed to Seville, asking for news of him. With the life she lived, with continual change of country and new friendships, her thoughts were in such confusion! But he appeared now as usual, and in the corrida he had seemed to her arrogant and strong, although rather unlucky. She did not understand much about bulls. "Was it nothing, that goring?"
Gallardo was irritated by the accent of indifference with which the woman asked the question. And he, when he considered himself between life and death, had thought only of her!