“All these things are very sad, señora marquesa, but you must not weep, my friend!”
And he dared go so far as to take hold of her hands, pressing them gently as he removed them from her eyes, humid with tears.
“I am not weeping for what is past,” she sighed, “but for myself, for my misfortune. For them there is no remedy. I am all alone in the world. My husband has not come back here since day before yesterday ... and perhaps he will never come back. Who knows what calumnies people may have poured into his ears! I had friends once, good friends, and one has died while the other is a fugitive.... You were the only one left me ... and now you are going away for ever!”
Shaken by these words, the government employee began to stammer,
“But you must always count on me, señora marquesa.... I am going away, but in reality I am not going at all, for you will have me in Buenos Aires, and....”
He decided that it was wiser not to go on, for his emotions might make him incoherent. Elena, who had dried her tears, was looking at him with passionate interest.
“I never have been able to make people understand me,” she said. “Men for instance are always like this. They all come running when a woman strikes their fancy, and they pursue her with their attentions, each in turn gaining possession of his rival’s place until the poor thing is so confused she doesn’t know which of them all she really prefers. Now that you are going away, and that I am losing you, perhaps forever, I suddenly take account of the fact that it was always the two poor friends who have already left us who deliberately crowded into the front row, and in doing so hid from me the man who is really the one I am most interested in!”
Moreno was so impressed by these words that he took Elena’s left hand in his.
“What are you saying, marquesa!”
She let him caress her hand, and then wove her smooth fingers about one of his adding, in a tone of utmost sincerity, as though revealing her most intimate thoughts,