She lowered her head as though her courage had suddenly abandoned her.
“You have no idea what my life has been.... I need wealth, I cannot live without money; and I spent the best part of my youth running after it ... uselessly! Just as I thought I held it in my hand, it vanished, to reappear again farther on.... Again I had to give chase.... And again.... Always the same story!”
She was silent for a few moments, assembling her thoughts; then she added, as though making a confession,
“Men cannot understand the anxieties and desires of the women of today. We need so much more to live on than the women of former times! An automobile and a pearl necklace are the modern woman’s uniform. Without them any women who thinks at all knows that she is unhappy, helpless.... Sometimes I had these indispensable articles, but I never felt sure of them.... I never could count on being able to keep them ... there was always the prospect of losing them the next day. And we all need to hope, don’t we, in order to live! So I am living on the hope now that my husband will make a fortune ... even though I cannot foresee when that might happen. Yet even so, it is enough to help me stand this horrible exile.”
Then, in a tone of discouragement, she went on,
“And what is he likely to make? Sous, perhaps, where you make thousands of pesos! No ... I ought never to have married Federico!”
She raised her head and smiled sadly at Robledo.
“Perhaps it would have meant happiness for me to have met a man like you, spirited, energetic, able to master his destiny. And you, to become all that you had it in you to be, ought to have had a woman to inspire you....”
It was now Robledo’s turn to smile.
“It is a little late to talk of that.”