"I'll keep it up as long as I'm a mind to!" she retorted. "What are you going to do about it?"

"You shut your jaw," vociferated Berlanga, "or I'll break it for you!"

Then his rage burst out. Joining a bad act to an evil threat, he rained a volley of blows on the head of his mistress. Rafaela stopped crying, and through her gritted teeth spat out a flood of vile epithets.

"You dirty dog!" she cried. "You pimp! All you know how to do is hang around women. Coward! Sissy! The only part of a man you've got is your face!"

He growled:

"Take that, and that, you sow!"

The disgusting scene lasted a long time. Terrified, the woman stopped her noise, and fought. Soon her nose and mouth were streaming blood. In the kitchen resounded a confused tumult of blows and kicks, as the silversmith drove his victim into a corner and beat her up. After the sorry job was done, Berlanga cleared out and never came back till one or two in the morning. Then he went to his room and turned in without making a light, no doubt ashamed of his cowardly deed.

For a while he tried to excuse himself. After all, thought he, the whole blame wasn't his. Rafaela's tirade and the wine he himself had drunk, had been more than half at fault. Men, he reflected, certainly do become brutes when they drink.

The young woman was in her bedroom. From time to time, Berlanga heard her sigh deeply. Her sighs were long and tremulous, like those of a child still troubled in its dreams after having cried itself to sleep.

The silversmith exclaimed:

"Oh, Rafaela!"

He had to call her twice more. At last, in a kind of groan, the young woman answered:

"Well, what do you want?"

Slyly and proudly the silversmith grinned to himself. That question of hers practically amounted to forgiveness. The sweet moment of reconciliation was close at hand.

"Come here!" he ordered.

Another pause followed, during which the will of the man and of the woman seemed to meet and struggle, with strange magnetism, in the stillness of the dark house.

"Come, girl!" repeated the smith, softening his voice.

Then he added, after a moment:

"Well, don't you want to come?"

Another minute passed; for all women, even the simplest and most ignorant, know to perfection the magic secret of making a man wait for them. But after a little while, Berlanga heard Rafaela's bare feet paddling along the hall. The young woman reached the bedroom of the silversmith, and in the shadows her exploring hands met the hands that Manolo was stretching out to greet her.

"What do you want, anyhow?" she demanded, humble yet resentful.

"Come to bed!"

She obeyed. Many kisses sounded, given her by the smith. After a while the man's voice asked in an endearing yet overmastering way:

"Now, then, are you going to be good?"

Amadeo Zureda came back a couple of days later, eminently well pleased. His boy had played the part of a regular little man during the whole run. He had never cried, but had eaten whatever they had given him and had slept like a top, on the coal. When Zureda kissed his wife, he noticed that she had a black-and-blue spot on her forehead.

"That looks like somebody had hit you," said he. "Have you been fighting with any one?"

She hesitated, then answered:

"No, no. Why, who'd I be fighting with? Much less coming to blows? The night you left, the oil-bottle fell off the sideboard, and when I went to pick it up I got this bump."

"How about that big scratch, there?"

"Which one? Oh, you mean on my lip? I did that with a pin."

"That's too bad! Take care of yourself, little lady!"

Manolo Berlanga was there and heard all this. He had to bite his mustache to hide a wicked laugh; but the engineer saw nothing at all. The poor man suspected nothing. He remained quite blind. Even if he had not loved Rafaela, his adoration of the boy would have been enough to fill his eyes with dust.

IV

TRUTH, however, is mighty and will prevail. After a while Zureda began to observe that something odd was going on about him. Slowly and without knowing why, he found a sort of distance separating him from his companions, who treated him and looked at him in a new way. You would almost have said they were trying to extort from his eyes the confession of some risqué secret he was doubtless keeping well covered up and hidden; a secret everybody knew. A complex sentiment of curiosity and silence isolated him from his friends and seemed to befog him with inexplicable ridicule. After a while he grew much puzzled by this phenomenon.

"I wonder if I've changed?" thought he. "Maybe I'm sick, without knowing it. Or can it be that I'm mighty ugly, and nobody dares to tell me so?"

Not far from the station, and near Manzanares Street, there was an eating-house where the porters, engineers and firemen were wont to foregather. This establishment belonged to Señor Tomás, who in his youth had been a toreador. The aplomb and force, as well as the stout-heartedness of that brave, gay profession still remained his. Señor Tomás talked very little, and for those who knew him well his words had the authority of print. He was a tall old fellow, with powerful hands and shoulders; he wore velveteen trousers and little Andalusian jackets of black stuff; and over the sash with which he masked his growing girth he strapped a wide leather belt with a silver buckle.

One evening Señor Tomás was enjoying the air at the door of his eating-house when Zureda passed by. The tavern-keeper beckoned the engineer; and when Zureda had come near, looked fixedly into his eyes and said:

"You and I have got to have a few words."

Zureda remained dumb. The secret, chill vibration of an evil presentiment had passed like a cold wind through his heart. Presently recovering speech, he answered:

"Any time you say so."

They reëntered the tavern, which just then was almost without patrons. A high wooden shelf, painted red and covered with bottles, ran about the room. On the wall was hung the stuffed head of the bull that had given Señor Tomás the tremendous gash which had torn his leg open and had obliged him to lay aside forever the garb of a toreador. At the rear, the bartender had fallen asleep behind the polished bar, on which a little fountain of water was playing its perpetual music.

The two men sat down at a big table, and the tavern-keeper clapped his hands together.

"Hey you, there!" he cried.

The bartender woke up and came to him.

"What'll you have?" asked he.

"Bring some olives and two cups of wine."

A long pause followed. Señor Tomás with voracious pulls at his smoldering cigar set its tip glowing. A kind of gloomy preoccupation hardened his close-shaven face—a face that showed itself bronzed and fleshy beneath the white hair grandly combed and curled upon his forehead.

Presently he began:

"I hate to see two men fight, because if they're spirited it's bound to be serious. But still I can't bear to see a good man and a hard-working man be made a laughing-stock for everybody. Get me?"

Amadeo Zureda first grew pale and then red. Yes, he knew something was up. The old man had called him to tell him some terrible mystery. He felt that the strange feeling of vacancy all about him, which he had been sensing for some time, was at last going to be explained. He trembled. Something black, something vast was closing over his head; it might be one of those fearful tragedies that sometimes cut a human life in twain.

"I don't know how to talk, and I don't like to talk," went on the tavern-keeper. "That's why I don't beat round the bush, but I call a spade a spade. Yes, sir, I call things by their right names. Because in this world, Amadeo—you mark my