Febrer was admiring her with his serious eyes. He marveled now at the stupidity which had caused him to think of Margalida for all these months as a child, as an undeveloped creature, without realizing her graces. He remembered with scorn those señoritas of the city for whom the soldiers in the fonda sighed. Again he thought of the courting of Margalida with an annoyance resembling jealousy. Must this girl fall a prey to one of those dusky-faced barbarians who would subject her to slavery of the soil like a beast?
"Margalida!" he murmured, as if about to say something important. "Margalida!"
But he spoke no more. The old-time rake felt his instincts of libertinism aroused by the perfume exhaled by this woman, an indefinable perfume of flesh fresh and virginal, which he thought he inhaled, like a connoisseur, more with the imagination than through sense of smell. At the same time—a strange thing for him!—he experienced a timidity which deprived him of speech; a timidity like that he had felt in his early youth when, far from the easy conquests on his estate in Majorca, he ventured to address himself to worldly-wise women on the Continent. Was it not an unworthy act for him to speak of love to this girl whom he had considered a child and who respected him as if he were her father?
"Margalida! Margalida!"
After these exclamations, which aroused the girl's curiosity, making her raise her eyes to fix them questioningly on his, he at last began to speak, asking her about the progress of the courting. Had she decided on anyone? Who was to be the lucky man? The Ironworker? the Minstrel?
She lowered her eyes again, in her confusion picking up a corner of her apron and raising it to her bosom. She did not know. She hesitated and lisped like a child in her bashfulness. She did not wish to marry—neither the Minstrel or the Ironworker, nor anybody. She had acquiesced in the courting because all girls did the same when they reached a certain age. Besides (here she flushed vividly), it gave her a kind of satisfaction to humiliate her friends, who were raging with envy on seeing the great number of her suitors. She was grateful to the youths who came from great distances to see her, but as for loving one of them—or marrying——
She had slackened her pace as she spoke. Pèp's wife and his son passed on unconsciously, and as the two were left alone in the path, they at last stopped, without realizing what they were doing.
"Margalida! Almond Blossom!"
To the devil with shyness! Febrer felt arrogant and masterful as in his better days. Why this fear? A peasant girl! A child!
He spoke with a firm accent, trying to fascinate her with the impassioned fixedness of her eyes, drawing near her, as if to caress her with the music of his words. And how about him? What did Margalida think of him? What if he should present himself to Pèp some day, telling him that he wished to marry his daughter?