Nobody but me observed it, because all the rest were absorbed in conversation. At last I saw her sit down in her chair, take up her work, and go on with it in silence.
I went away to luncheon at the _fonda_, without accepting their invitation to remain. I had a vehement desire to enjoy my precious conquest by myself; for I considered it such in my mad presumption after she gave over looking for it. Once in my quarters and assured that the door was fastened, and that nobody could see me through the key-hole, I snatched the kerchief from my pocket and gave myself up to a sort of madness which even now makes me blush when I remember it. I breathed its perfume with intoxication, kissed it numberless times, pressed it to my heart, swearing to be eternally faithful, put it away with the pictures of my father, took it out to kiss it, and put it away again. At last I came to the end of all imaginable extravagances, better suited to a young student of rhetoric than to the captain of a steamboat of three thousand tons.
In the afternoon I was with the family at Cabañal as usual. Martí did not accompany us, having to attend to a certain business matter. (Did it have to do with the five thousand pesetas that his brother-in-law had lost?) At all events, I was selfish enough to rejoice at his absence. During the trip out and the hours that we stayed at the place, I observed something in Cristina's manner and gestures that made my heart tremble with joy and hope. I cannot explain how, without her looking at me nor once speaking directly to me, I felt overwhelmed by a celestial happiness, but so it was. We passed all the afternoon in the summer-house. The ladies worked at their sewing or embroidery. I read or made believe to read. Cristina, affected by an unusual languor, did not rise from her chair until the moment of leaving. While the others laughed and jested, I saw that she kept silence and was grave although without any apparent cause. Her face was slightly flushed. My imagination suggested to me the idea that it was because of the thoughts drifting through her soul and the timidity that they inspired. On the dark and gloomy horizon of my life light began to dawn; so my heart said to me. During that unforgettable afternoon, I was as happy as the angels must be in Paradise, or the author of a drama when he goes out on the stage to receive applause between the leading old man and young lady.