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As I was slowly returning, the image of María again came into my mind. Those lonely spots⁠—the silent forests, the flowers, birds, brooks⁠—why did they remind me of her? What suggestion of María was there in the misty shadows, in the breeze stirring among the leaves, in the echo of the river? It was a very Eden; but she was lacking. I could not cease to love her, even if she did not love me. I drank in the perfume of the cluster of wild lilies which José’s daughters had plucked for me, and thought that perhaps they might come to be touched by María’s lips⁠—so weak had become my heroic resolves of the night before.

As soon as I reached the house I went to my mother’s sewing-room; María was there. She gave me a greeting, but then dropped her eyes to her sewing. My mother was delighted to see me come in, for she had been anxious at my being so long away, and had just sent someone to look for me. I talked to them about José’s improvements, while Mayo was licking off the burrs that had stuck to my clothes.

María looked up again, and glanced at the cluster of lilies which I held in my left hand, leaning with my right on my rifle. I thought that she wanted them; but a strange fear, a regard for my mother and for my resolves of the past night, kept me offering them to her. But I pleased myself imagining how beautiful she would look with one of my small lilies in her shining hair. They ought to be hers, because she must have filled up my vase during the morning with orange-flowers and violets.

When I went to my room, not a single flower was there. If I had found a viper coiled up on my table it would not have caused me so great a shock. The fragrance of María’s flowers had come to stand with me for something of her own spirit, floating about near me in my hours of study and of sleep. It was true, then; she did not love me! My dreamy imagination had been deceiving me. And this cluster of lilies which I had brought for her⁠—what should I do with it now? If another woman had been there then, in that moment of wounded pride, of anger with María, I would have given them to her, for her to show to everybody. I put them to my lips, as if for a last farewell to a cherished delusion, and flung them out of the window.