But now that she was quite waked up, and could contemplate what had occurred a few hours previous, she began to acquire the certainty that there had been someone close to her window that morning. Now she could distinctly remember the muffled sound of steps on the balcony, a slight creaking of the boards in the outside wall, as though someone were leaning heavily against them. She could even have averred that she had heard sounds like the lamentations of someone lost; and instinctively she believed that the being who had been near her in the night on the other side of the bungalow wall was no other than her husband.
Twice she had gone to the window and had opened it in the hope of finding some paper or other trace of her invisible visitor, who had come with the dawn, and vanished at sunrise.
“It was Federico,” she thought. “It could have been no one else.... Robledo must know where he is! How I wish he would come back so I could speak to him!”
A little after midday, as she was smoking her twentieth cigarette, there came a knock at the door. Several moments elapsed, and again came a knock. Elena concluded that, since Sebastiana was no longer there to keep them in order, the young servant-girls had left the house after lunch, to run about the town in search of news and gossip.
So she went to open the door herself, and was much astonished at sight of her caller. It was Moreno. There was nothing so remarkable about his coming to call, yet Elena could not conceal a gesture of astonishment. She had forgotten him so completely! Of late other men than he had completely absorbed her attention.
Blushing with embarrassment for the forgetfulness of him her surprise had betrayed, she invited him to come in, in a tone of quite exaggerated affability. Surely it was her good luck which was sending her this fool to entertain her with his conversation during the interminable afternoon that somehow or other she must live through! And this call was at least a break in the monotony of her solitude.
As he came in Moreno looked at the furnishings with a gently protective air, quite as though they belonged to him. Then, with an assurance he had never before revealed, he sat down in the chair which the marquesa indicated he was to occupy.
“I’m off to Buenos Aires by the afternoon train, señora marquesa,” he announced with a gravity of a man who knows his own importance. “I must see the government representatives and give them an account of what happened here, and talk with the minister of public works about keeping things going on.”
Elena received all this with nods of understanding and sympathy, her eyes all the while smiling maliciously ... it was amusing to see this worthy family man stressing his own importance.
“But before I went away, I wanted to see you again to discuss a matter relating to my future responsibilities.”