"Why?" said Pepita, in her cold, soft voice, and with the simply cold and curious look in her great, richly lashed eyes.
"Because they are in love with him--all of them," replied Manuel, sweepingly.
"' Why?'" Manuel echoed, somewhat bewildered by the frank, indifferent ignoring of all natural reasons in this question--"'why?' Because he is so tall and strong and well made, because he is handsome, because he is more daring and graceful than any of the others--because he is Sebastiano."
Pepita laughed, and opened and shut her fan quickly.
"I was thinking how he must despise them," she answered.
"Oh, no," said Manuel, who was not very clever; "he is always good to women. There was Sarita--a poor little thing who had always lived in the country. She saw him at her first bull-fight and was never happy afterward. She could think of nothing else, and she was too innocent to hide it. She used to slip away from home and contrive to follow him when he did not see her. She found a woman who knew some one who knew him, and she gave her all her little savings in presents to bribe her to be her friend and talk to her about him. Once or twice she met him, and because she was such a pretty little one, he spoke kindly to her and praised her eyes and her dancing. He did not know she was in love with him."
"He knew," said Pepita. "He would _think_ she was, even if she cared nothing for him, and since she did care he would know before she did and would be proud of it, and make it as much worse as he could."
Manuel gazed at her a moment in silence, twirling his rather small mustacha. This beautiful, cool, mocking little person, the melting softness of whose eyes and lips should have promised such feminine tenderness and emotion, bewildered him greatly; it was plain that she was wholly unmoved by the glories of Sebastiano, and saw no glamour in his romances. What other girl would have asked "Why?"--and in that tone? It was difficult to go on with his story.
"He could not help it that she was in love with him," he said. "And she could not help it."
"Why?" inquired Pepita for the third time, and with a prettier coolness than before.
"Why," stammered Manuel, "because--because that is the way with all of them."