“I don’t know what you mean,” he said finally. “But if you are talking about my wife, please remember that she bears my name, and that ... I am very fond of her....”
In the pause that followed a distance increasing with the minutes separated the two men. Robledo made a determined effort to renew the cordiality of their relations.
“Life over there is hard. We are very far from having even the most ordinary comforts of civilization. But the desert is a great sea of energy that cleanses and strengthens those of us who go to it as refugees from the old world, or from ourselves. A plunge into it prepares us for a new kind of life, a life such as you know nothing of.... You find there men who have escaped from all sorts of catastrophes, men from everywhere. Yet all differences of race, birth, and breeding are washed away. Only the fundamentals remain. There men show themselves for what they are, the strength that is in them freed from all the bonds that entangle you here.... And that is why I call my country what it really is—‘the land of all the world’. It is waiting for us, Federico!”
But the Marquis appeared unmoved.
“And what is waiting for you here? Perhaps public disgrace or prison, or even that most stupid of deaths, suicide. But there you will learn to know hope again, hope, the best thing in our lives! Are you coming with me?”
The Marquis turned to him. His reply was ready. But Robledo checked him with a gesture.
“You understand the conditions.... You must go out there as you would go to war, with little baggage and no encumbrances. A woman, in this sort of expedition, is nothing but a burden. Your wife isn’t going to die of grief just because you leave her in Europe. You can always write—and such an absence as that renews instead of exhausting love. Besides, you will be sending her money to live on, and whatever way you look at it, you will be doing more for her than by going off to jail or shooting yourself. Are you coming with me, Federico?”
Torre Bianca remained silent for a space. Then he got up, made a gesture which Robledo interpreted as meaning that he was to wait, and left the room.
The American did not remain alone long; nor did he remain altogether in silence, for through the walls and hangings, came, as from a great distance, the sound of voices, that rose once or twice to the intensity of angry cries. Then came the sound of approaching steps, and Elena appeared, followed by her husband.
Elena, too, bore the traces of recent events. For her, too, certain hours she had just lived through had been so many years. But although she appeared much older, she was none the less handsome. On the contrary, her tired beauty seemed more sincere than the skillfully enhanced splendor of her happier days. Now she possessed the melancholy charm that flowers have just as they begin to fade. For twenty-four hours she had neglected her dressing table. During that time she had experienced a succession of emotions that were either extremely painful or else annoying to her vanity. For it was difficult for her to think more of her husband’s distress than of what people were saying....