"How vast is ignorance," he said to his manager. "And I had thought that all this was only good for convents. How much these people seem to value it."
Gallardo received new surprises. He was proud of his own furniture brought from Madrid, all of gaudy silk and complicated design, heavy and rich, seeming to proclaim, as it were by shouts, the money it had cost, but here he was dazzled at the sight of delicate and fragile chairs, white or green, tables and cupboards of simple lines, walls of a single tint with no other ornament than small paintings separated by great distances, and hanging by heavy cords, the whole giving a tone of subdued and quiet elegance that seemed the handiwork of artists. He was ashamed of his own stupefaction and of what he had admired in his house as the supreme of luxury. "How vast is ignorance!" And as he seated himself he did so with care, fearing lest the chair would crumble beneath his weight.
Doña Sol's presence banished these thoughts. He saw her, as he had never before seen her, without mantilla or hat, her glossy hair hanging, and seeming to justify her romantic name. Her arms, of superlative whiteness, escaped from the silken funnels of a Japanese tunic crossed over the breast, which left uncovered a space of adorable neck, slightly amber-colored, with the lines that suggest the neck of the mother Venus. Stones of all colors set in rings of strange design covered her fingers and scintillated with magic splendor as she moved her hands. On her youthful wrists glistened bracelets of gold, some of Oriental filigree with mysterious inscriptions, others massive, from which hung amulets and little foreign figures, mementoes of distant travels. She had crossed one leg over the other with manlike freedom, and on the point of one of her feet dangled a red slipper with a high, gilded heel, tiny as a toy, and covered with heavy embroidery.
Gallardo's ears buzzed, his vision was clouded, he only managed to distinguish a pair of blue eyes fixed on him with an expression half caressing, half ironic. To hide his emotion, he smiled, showing his teeth,—the expressionless smile of a child who wishes to be amiable.
"No, Señora—many thanks. That amounted to nothing."
Thus he received Doña Sol's expressions of gratitude for his heroic feat of the other afternoon. Little by little Gallardo began to acquire a certain composure. The lady and the manager talked of bulls, and this gave the swordsman a sudden confidence. She had seen him kill several times, and she remembered exactly the principal incidents. Gallardo felt pride that this woman had gazed upon him at such moments and had even kept fresh the memory of his deeds. She opened a lacquer box, decorated with weird flowers, and offered the men cigarettes with golden mouthpieces which exhaled a strange and pungent perfume.
"They contain opium; they are very agreeable."
And she lighted one, following the smoke spirals with her greenish eyes which acquired a tremor of liquid gold as they refracted the light. The bull-fighter, accustomed to the strong Havana tobacco, smoked the cigarette with curiosity. Pure straw; a mere treat for ladies. But the strange perfume of the smoke slowly overcame his timidity.
Doña Sol, looking at him fixedly, asked questions about his life. She wished to get a glimpse behind the scenes of glory, of the subterranean ways of celebrity, of the miserable wandering life of the bull-fighter before he gained public acclamation; and Gallardo, with sudden confidence, talked and talked, telling of his youthful days, dwelling with proud delectation on the lowliness of his origin, although omitting all that he considered questionable in his eventful adolescence.
"Very interesting, very original!" said the handsome lady, and withdrawing her eyes from the bull-fighter they became lost in wandering contemplation, as if fixed on something invisible.