class="letter">IT hardly takes more than a couple of years of married life to age a docile man; or at least—about the same thing—to fill him with those forward-looking ideas of caution, economy and peace that sow the seed of fear for the morrow, in quiet souls.

One time Zureda was laid up a while with a bad cold. Getting better of this, the engineer on a momentous night spoke seriously to his wife concerning their future. His bronzed face lying on the whiteness of the pillows brought out the salience of his cheek-bones and the strength of his profile. The vertical furrow between his brows seemed deeper than ever, cut into the serene gravity of his forehead. His wife listened to him attentively, sitting on the edge of the bed, with one leg crossed over the other. She cradled the upper knee between joined hands.

Slowly the engineer's talk unwound itself, to the effect that life is a poor thing at best, constantly surrounded by misfortunes that can strike us in an infinitude of ways. To-day it's a cold draft, to-morrow a chill or a sore throat, or maybe a cancer, that death uses to steal our lives away. All about us, yawning like immense jaws, the earth is always opening, the earth into which all of us must some time descend; and in this very swift and savagely universal hecatomb no one can be sure of witnessing both the rising and the setting of the same day.

"I'm not afraid of work, you know," went on Zureda, "but engines are made of iron, and even so they wear out at last and get tired of running. Men are just the same. And when it happens to me, as it's got to, some day, what'll become of us, then?"

Calmly Rafaela shook her head. She by no means shared her husband's fears. No doubt Amadeo's sickness had made him timorous and pessimistic.

"I think you're making it worse than it really is," she answered. "Old age is still a long way off; and, besides, very likely we'll have children to help us."

Zureda's gesture was a negation.

"That don't matter," he replied. "Children may not come at all; and even if they do, what of that? As for old age being far off, you're wrong. Even to-day, do you think I've got the strength and quickness, or even the enjoyment in my work, that I had when I was twenty-five? Not on your life! Old age is certainly coming, and coming fast. So I tell you again we've got to save something.

"If we do, when I can no longer run an engine I'll open a little machine-shop; and if I should die suddenly, leaving you fifteen or twenty thousand pesetas,^[A] you could easily start a good laundry in some central location, for that's the kind of work you understand."

^[A] Three or four thousand dollars.

To all this Zureda added a number of other arguments, discreet and weighty, so that his wife declared herself convinced. The engineer already had a plan laid out, that made him talk this way. Among the people who had come to see him, while he had been sick, was one Manolo Berlanga, whose friendship with him had been brotherly indeed. This Berlanga had a job at a silversmith's shop in the Paseo de San Vincente. He had no relatives, and made rather decent wages. A good many times he had told Zureda how much he wanted to find some respectable house where he could live in a decent, private way, paying perhaps four or five pesetas a day for board and room.

"Suppose, now," went on Amadeo, "that Manolo should pay five pesetas a day; that's thirty duros a month—thirty good dollars—and the house costs us eight dollars. Well, that leaves us twenty-two dollars a month, and with that, and a few dollars that I'll put in, we can all live high."

To this Rafaela consented, rather stirred by the new ideas awakened by the innovation. The silversmith was a free-and-easy, agreeable young fellow, who chattered all the time and played the guitar in no mean fashion.

"Yes, but how about a place for him?" asked she. "Is there any? What room could we give him?"

"Why, the little alcove off the dining-room, of course."

"Yes, I was thinking of that, too. But it's mighty small, and there's no light in it."

The engineer shrugged his shoulders.

"It's good enough just to sleep in!" he exclaimed. "If we were dealing with a woman, that would be different. But we men get along any old way, all right."

Rafaela wrote to Berlanga next day, at her husband's request, telling him to come and see them. Promptly on the dot the silversmith arrived. He looked about twenty-eight, wore tightly-belted velveteen trousers gaitered under the shoe, and a dark overcoat with astrakhan collar and cuffs. He was of middle height, lean, pale-faced, with a restless manner, a fluent, witty way of talking. On some pretext or other the wife went out, leaving the two men to chew things over and come to an agreement.

"Now, as for living with you people," said Berlanga, "I'll be very glad to give five pesetas per. Or I'll better that, if you say so."

"No, no, thanks," answered Zureda. "I don't want to be bargaining with you. We can all help each other. You and I are like brothers, anyhow."

That night after supper, Rafaela dragged all the useless furniture out of the dining-room alcove and swept and scoured it clean. Next day she got up early to go to a hard-by pawnshop, where she bought her an iron bed with a spring and a woolen mattress. This bed she carefully set up, and fixed it all fine and soft. A couple of chairs, a washstand and a little table covered with a green baize spread completed the furnishing of the room.

After everything was ready, the young woman dressed and combed herself to receive the guest, who arrived about the middle of the afternoon with his luggage, to wit: a box with his workman's tools, a trunk and a little cask. This cask held a certain musty light wine, which—so Berlanga said, after coffee and one of Zureda's cigars had made him expansive—had been given him by a "lady friend" of his who ran a tavern.

A few days passed, days of unusual pleasure to the engineer and his wife, for the silversmith was a man of joyful moods and very fond of crooking his elbow, so that his naturally fertile conversation became hyperbolically colored and quite Andalusian in its exuberance. At dessert, the merry quips of Berlanga woke sonorous explosions of hilarity in Amadeo. When he laughed, the engineer would lean his massive shoulders against the back of the chair. Now and again, as if to underscore his bursts of merriment, he would deal the table shrewd blows. After this he would slowly emit his opinions; and if he had to advise Berlanga, he did it in a kind of paternal way, patiently, good-naturedly.

When he was quite well again, Amadeo went back to work. The morning he took leave of his wife, she asked him:

"Which engine have you got, to-day?"

"Nigger," he answered.

"My, what bad luck! I'm afraid something's going to happen to you!"

"Rubbish! Why should it? I can handle her!"

He kissed Rafaela, tenderly pressing her against his big, strong breast. At this moment an unwholesome thought, grotesquely cruel, cut his mind like a whip; a thought that he would pass the night awake, out in the storm, in the engine-cab, while there in Madrid another man would be sleeping under the same roof with his wife. But this unworthy suspicion lasted hardly a second. The engineer realized that Berlanga, though a riotous, dissipated chap, was at heart a brotherly friend, far from base enough to betray him in any such horrible manner.

Rafaela went with her husband to the stairway. There they both began again to inflame each other with ardent kisses and embraces of farewell. The wife's black eyes filled with tears as she told him to keep himself well bundled up and to think often of her. Tears quite blinded her.

"What a good lass she is!" murmured Zureda.

And as he recalled the poisonous doubt of a moment before,