"I'm very glad to hear it," the actress said. "Now you'll be leaving very soon and I'll lose sight of you. It was high time really! You know, my dear child, you were beginning to get tiresome with your assiduous worship, that mute, persistent, tenacious adoration of yours. But up in Madrid you'll get over it all. Tut, tut, now ... don't say you won't. No need to perjure yourself. I guess I know what young men are like! And you're a young man. The next time we meet, you'll have other things in your head. I'll be a friend, just a friend; and that's what—and all—I want to be."
"But will I find you here when I come back?" Rafael asked, anxiously.
"You want to know more things than anybody I ever knew! How can I say whether I'll be here or not? Nobody in the world was ever sure of holding me. I don't know where I'll be tomorrow myself.... But, no," she continued, gravely, "if you come back by next spring, you'll find me here. I'm thinking of staying surely until then. I want to see the orange-trees in bloom, go back to my early childhood—the only memories of my past that have followed me everywhere. Many a time I have gone to Nice, spending a fortune and crossing half the world to get there—and just to see a handful of puny orange-trees in bloom; now I want to take one great, deep, plunge into the deluge of orange blossoms that inundates these fields every year. It's the one thing that keeps me in Alcira.... I'm sure. So if you come back about that season, you will find me; and we will meet for one last time; for that will be the limit of my endurance. I shall simply have to fly away, however hard poor auntie takes it.... For the present, however, I am quite comfortable. You see I was so tired! I find this solitude a welcome refuge after a stormy voyage. Only something very important indeed could persuade me to leave it at once."
But they saw each other on many another afternoon in the garden, there. It was saturated now with the fragrance of ripe oranges. The vast valley lay blue beneath the winter sun. Oranges, oranges, everywhere, reaching out, it seemed, through the foliage, to the industrious hands that were plucking them from the branches. Carts were creaking all along the roads, trundling heaps of golden fruit over the ruts. The large shipping houses rang again with the voices of girls singing at their work as they selected and wrapped the oranges in paper. Hammers were pounding at the wooden crates, and off toward France and England in great golden waves those daughters of the South rolled—capsules of golden skin, filled with sweet juice—the quintessence of Spanish sunshine.
Leonora, standing on tiptoe under an old tree, with her back toward Rafael, was looking for a particularly choice orange among the dense branches. As she swayed this way and that, the proud, graceful curves of her vigorous slenderness became more beautiful than ever.
"I'm leaving tomorrow," the young man said, dispiritedly.
Leonora turned around. She had found her orange and was peeling it with her long pink nails.
"Tomorrow?" she said, smiling. "Everything comes if you wait long enough!... The best of success to you, señor deputy."
And bringing the fragrant fruit to her lips, she sank her white, glistening teeth into the golden pulp, closing her eyes rapturously, to sense the full warm sweetness of the juice.
Rafael stood there pale and trembling, as if something desperate were in his mind.