All that morning Elena spent in her parlor, after the little maid had brought her her breakfast. With impatience she contemplated the long hours that must elapse before night. One thing she had determined upon. She would send for Robledo, but he too, according to the report of the servant girl, had gone with the comisario to the Rojas ranch, and would probably not return before nightfall.
She could stay no longer in that place. For her husband it was different; he had his work there. But she would ask Robledo to pay her passage back to Paris, or at least to give her money enough to get to Buenos Aires. Once in the capital, she would know how to get along. In her early experiences she had had similar or worse situations to face and she had long ago discovered that a woman of determined will can get out of difficulties far more easily than a man.
As she went over in her mind the conversation she would have later that day with the engineer, she felt consumed with impatience; but at the same time she dreaded to see the hours glide swiftly by when she remembered that at the end of a certain number of them someone was likely to appear at her window and demand the fulfillment of a promise she had made the night before.
It required a tremendous effort on her part to believe that she had not dreamed that interview with Manos Duras. “What madness! How could I—the person who is really I—have done such a thing?”
Yet, many times before in her life, she had felt the same wonder at her own acts, as though there existed within her two antagonistic personalities, each one of which aroused the loathing of the other.
“And perhaps that man will actually come back here,” she thought, with a tremor of nervous irritation.
To quiet her nerves she assured herself that probably the gaucho would forget her promises. Then she remembered the vague news brought in by the maid-servant about some frightful occurrence or other at the Rojas ranch.
“He will not come,” she kept saying to herself as she contemplated the possibility of Manos Duras’ coming to see her that night as had been agreed. “How could he dare to make such absurd pretensions?...”
No, certainly not; and after the news which would by that time be the common talk of the town, he would not dare come back to make any claims. And even though that semi-savage was a fear-inspiring opponent at close range, she had only to keep her doors and windows well locked in order to protect herself from his presence.
She stopped thinking about the gaucho; but her memory was still tormented by memories of the preceding night. What was it that had happened near dawn just as the open space of her window began to grow luminous? She had been in the confused state of half-consciousness, when one’s eyes refuse to open, and one’s thoughts alternate between waking and sleep.