"No, oh, no!" She shook her head sadly; then threw off the feeling apparently with a quick turn of the head. "The Señor is within his rights." Beltran's heart was touched. He drew near to her, and laid his arm about her shoulder, as he had not done now for a long time. She stooped her fine height, and drew her shoulder out from under his arm. She had no right now to feel that answering thrill; he was hers no longer. A sob, which she had tried to smother in her throat, struck him remorsefully.
"They will soon be gone, Agueda; then all will be as before."
"Nothing can ever be as before, Señor. I see it now, either for you or for me."
The wall within which she had encased herself, that dignity which silence under wrong gives to the oppressed, once broken, the flood of her words poured forth. The terrible sense of injustice overwhelmed and broke down her well-maintained reserve. She looked up at Beltran with reproach in her eyes, interrogation shining from their depths.
"Why could you not have told me, warned me, cautioned me? Ah, Nada! Nada knew." Her helplessness overcame her. Beltran had been her salvation, her teacher, her reliance. She felt wrecked, lost; she was drifting rudderless upon an ocean whose shores she could not discern. Where could she turn? Her only prop and stay withdrawn, what was there to count upon?
"I do not know the world, Beltran. My people never know the world. I have never known any world but this--but this." She stretched out her despairing arms to the grey square which she had called home. "Ah! Nada, dear Nada, you knew, you knew! I never dreamt that she meant you, Beltran, you!"
Hark! It was Felisa's voice calling to him. Soon she would be here. She would see them; she would suspect. Beltran shrugged his shoulders, he pursed out his lips. The Agueda whom he had known was ever smiling, ever ready to be bent to his will. This girl was complaining, reproachful; besides which, her looks were going. How could he ever have thought her even pretty? He contrasted her in a flash with the little white thing, all soft filmy lawn and laces, and turned away to rejoin that other sweeter creature who had never given him a discontented look.
It had come to this then! Her misery could wring from him nothing more than a careless shrug of the shoulders!