There was an ironic gleam in her eyes as he put this innocent question. But she restrained her cynicism and replied, sadly,
“Oh, why talk of him? He is a very good man, but he is not the husband a woman such as I should have.... He has never understood me. Don’t you see that he is weak, that he can never conquer in the battle of life? And I was born for greater things ... yet here I am, an exile in this barbarous land, and through his fault!”
With a glow in her eyes that might have come from intense feeling she looked at the young American who lowered his eyes not knowing what to say; then she added thoughtfully,
“Can’t you believe that a man who was young and energetic might have gone very far with a woman such as I to inspire him?”
Surprised, young Watson glanced up at her; then he lowered his eyes again to her feet as though afraid to look at her. Elena smiled to herself.... Then she murmured softly,
“But life is always like that! The men we don’t want pursue us, and those who really arouse our interest always try to escape us!”
At these words the young man raised his eyes and looked at his hostess without the slightest suggestion of timidity but with a questioning expression. What did she mean?... He did not know life at first hand; and, being a man of action, he cared very little for reading and had never, from books, caught glimpses of what life was really like. But he kept deep in his memory the observations made in certain rather simple and ingenuous novels of abundant adventure, that he had read on railway journeys and sea voyages, by way of escaping tedium. Besides this he had seen a hundred or more “movie” stories, so that, in films as well as in the pages of the novels he had read, he had become familiar with the “fatal charmer” type of woman, the “vamp,” the creature who is beautiful in body and of a malicious and trouble-making soul, tempting men to leave the ways of honor, troubling the domestic and gently monotonous happiness which every young man should seek in marriage and family life. Was the marquesa perhaps one of these “vamps?”... Robledo certainly didn’t seem to have much use for her....
But he did not stop there. He went on to think of all the beautiful women who are calumnied and persecuted—also in the movies—and who, because of the envy they inspire are forced to go through sufferings which had more than once brought tears to his eyes as he watched the film roll on. Yes, there must be victims such as these in the real world too ... why else should there be so many of them on the screen?
He was looking searchingly at Elena trying to discover which category she belonged to, the “fatal charmers” or the persecuted victims of malice and envy; but she meanwhile lowered her eyes, and said gently,
“It hurt me very much to see that you avoided me. Surrounded as I am by selfish and frightfully materialistic men, I need a friendship that is pure and disinterested, I want a companion who will appreciate me for my real self, my soul, and not for whatever physical charms I may possess!”