The senator was excusing himself confusedly to the walls, the furniture, and turning his back in his agitation on the dismayed Rene, the only one who could have listened to him.
“He did not let me finish. . . . He guessed from the very first word. . . .”
Hearing the outcry, Chichi hastened in in time to see her father slipping from his wife’s arms to the sofa, and from there to the floor, with glassy, staring eyes, and foaming at the mouth.
From the luxurious rooms came forth the world-old cry, always the same from the humblest home to the highest and loneliest:—
“Oh, Julio! . . . Oh, my son, my son! . . .”
CHAPTER V
THE BURIAL FIELDS
The automobile was going slowly forward under the colorless sky of a winter morning.
In the distance, the earth’s surface seemed trembling with white, fluttering things resembling a band of butterflies poised on the furrows. On one of the fields the swarm was of great size, on others, it was broken into small groups.