He stops, as though some one had touched him on the shoulder. He does not see any one behind him, but his eyes, wandering over the groups sitting at the tables meet something which makes his voice tremble.
"It is she, Prince."
Michael would not have recognized her. He sees two ladies, escorted by two American officers, entering the Café. One of them is Valeria, dressed with gay and showy elegance, as though anxious to compensate in a moment for years of frugality and privation.
Against the soft twilight the café windows begin to gleam with a reddish glow. One after another, the large lamps within are lighted. To the Prince's ears come the voluptuous wailings of violins.
"Life has changed very greatly since you went away, Prince. Every one feels a desperate hunger for amusement. The first thing that peace brought back to life was the tango."
Then Novoa begins to think about himself:
"What can I do here? I am poor. Everything I possessed in my country I have dropped here in the Casino. I have studied the mysteries of the ocean enough. How dearly it has cost me! I have had my little dream, and now I am going to resume my ill-paid work back there as a day laborer in science."
He thinks once more of her.
"Did you notice?... The poor Duchess, who made her what she is now, is lying up there in her grave, and here she is dancing, only a few months after her death."
He feels the harsh indignation, the sense of outraged morality, that all who have been scorned experience.