When Robledo came in he noticed that the woman he was seeking had gone to sit down at a table at the back of the room, at as great a distance as possible from the counter and the other patrons. His own arrival created quite a stir. The proprietress welcomed him with an obsequious smile, and the consumptive girl cast him a glance which was intended to be passionate but which Robledo took as a pathetic begging for alms. The drunken woman also gave him a smile which revealed the absence of several front teeth. Then she winked an invitation at him, but on seeing that all his attention was directed elsewhere, she cynically shrugged her shoulders and dozed off again.
He sat down at a table opposite the woman who had aroused his curiosity, so as to be able to watch her more closely than was possible in the street; and he almost smiled as he discovered how deceptive the vagabond’s appearance of shabby elegance was.
From a distance the air with which she wore her clothes might have taken in the humble or the imaginative man who is disposed to believe in the elegance of any woman who pays him some attention. But viewed close at hand this elegance was discovered to be so fictitious as to be grotesque. Her hat, of impressive proportions, revealed a frayed brim and broken feathers. Her skirt, when she sat down, left her legs exposed and it would have been difficult to count the holes and darns in her stockings. One of her shoes was worn through to the ground, and on the other the leather had split over one of the toes. Her face was covered with rouge and a white paste which did not succeed in concealing its wrinkles and other signs of a hard life. But those eyes!
There were moments when he felt convinced ... this was Elena. They both looked at one another fixedly. Then, with a gesture, she asked if she could draw nearer and finally came to sit down at his table.
“I thought we had better come in here to talk. Men don’t usually like to be seen with a woman in the street. Most of them are married. But perhaps you are not like the others in that respect....”
Her voice was hoarse; it did not in any way recall the one he had heard twelve years ago; yet, in spite of this fact, his conviction grew.
“It is she,” he thought. “There is no doubt of it....”
“I may be wrong,” the woman went on. “But I think you must be a bachelor. I don’t see any wedding ring....”
And she looked smilingly at the masculine hands on the table opposite her. But something else preoccupied her far more than the civil status of the gentleman who had followed her. She kept looking anxiously toward the counter near which the waiter had taken up a position, in expectation of the new patron’s order.
“May I order something?” she asked. “The whiskey here is fine. There’s no better in the city.”