VI

What had María been thinking of in those four days?

She was just placing a lamp on one of the tables in the parlor when I went up to greet her; I had wondered at not finding her in the family group that had met us at the very door. Her hand trembled so that the lamp was in danger of falling; I sprang to her aid, less calm than I thought I should be. She seemed to me slightly pale, and there was a suspicion of a circle about her eyes, imperceptible to a casual glance. Her face was turned towards my mother, who was speaking just then, so that I could not see it in a good light, but I noticed in her hair an overblown pink; it was undoubtedly the one I had given her the evening before setting out for the valley. The little cross of enamelled coral which I had brought for her from Bogotá, precisely like the one I had given to each of my sisters also, she wore suspended from a black ribbon about her neck. She was very quiet, seated between my mother’s chair and mine. As my father’s decision about my departure was all the while in my mind, I must have appeared sad to her, for she said to me in a low voice, “Did the trip tire you very much?”

“No, María,” I answered, “but we have been so much in the sun, and have ridden so far⁠—”

I was going to say more, but her confidential tone, and the light, so new to me, which I discovered in her eyes, prevented me from doing anything but gaze at her, until, observing that she was embarrassed at the involuntary fixity of my look, and perceiving that my father’s eye was upon me (always most to be dreaded when a certain fleeting smile was playing upon his lips), I abruptly left the parlor and went to my room.

I closed the door. There were the flowers gathered for me by her. I bruised them with kisses. I tried to draw in at a single breath all their odors, hoping to find among them the perfume that clung to María’s garments. My tears fell upon them. María! María! How much I loved you!