And he grasped her hand, passionately, thrusting his fingers up her sleeve, fondling the delicate arm underneath her glove. She did not resist.
"There! Do you see, Rafael?" she said, smiling coldly. "You have touched me, and it's useless; not the slightest thrill. You're as good as dead to me. My flesh does not tingle at your fondling. In fact, I find it all decidedly annoying!"
Rafael realized that it was true. She had once trembled madly under his caresses. Now she was quite insensible, quite cold!
"Don't worry, Rafael. It's over, spelled with a capital O. It's not worth wasting a moment's thought on. As I look at you now I feel the way I do when I see one of my old dresses that, in its time, I went mad over. I see nothing but the defects—the absurdities of the fashion that is out of date. Our passion died as it should properly have died. Perhaps your deserting me was for the best. It was better for you to default in the full splendor of our honeymoon than to have broken with me afterwards, when I should have moulded my nature forever to your caresses. We were brought together ... oh, by the orange perfume, by that cursed Springtime; but you were not meant for me, nor was I ever meant for you. We are of different breeds. You were born a bourgeois. I am an out-and-out bohemian! Love and the novelty of my kind quite, dazzled you. You struggled hard, you beat your wings, to follow me, but you fell to earth from the very weight of your inherited traits. You have the appetites and the ambitions of people like you! Now you imagine you are unhappy! But you'll find you're not when you see yourself become a personage,' when you count the acreage of your orchards over, when you see your children growing up to inherit papa's power and fortune. This business of love for love's sake, mocking at law and morality, scorning life and peacefulness, that is our privilege, the privilege of us bohemians—the sole blessing left to us mad creatures whom society looks upon—quite properly, I suppose—with disdainful mistrust. Each to his own! The poultry to their quiet roost, where they can fatten in the sun; the birds of passage to their wandering life of song, sometimes in a flowering garden, sometimes in the cold and storm!"
And smiling again, as if those words, uttered with such gravity and conviction, had been too cruel in their effective summary of the whole story of their love, she added in a jesting tone:
"That was a fine little paragraph, wasn't it? What a pity you didn't hear it in time to tack it on at the end of your speech!"
The carriage had entered the Plaza de Oriente; and was drawing up in front of Leonora's house.
"May I go in with you?" the deputy asked anxiously, much as a child might beg for a toy.
"Why? You'll only be bored. It will be the same as here. Upstairs there is no moon, and there are no orange-trees in bloom. You can't expect two nights like that in a life like yours. Besides, I don't want Beppa to see you. She has a vivid recollection of that afternoon in the Hôtel de Roma when I got your note. I'd lose prestige with her if she saw me in your company."
With a commanding gesture she motioned him to the sidewalk. When the carriage had gone they stood there together for a moment looking at each other for the last time.