And she threw her arms about Rafael, kissing him over and over again, caressing his bowed, pensive head, within which a tempest of conflicting ideas and resolutions was boiling.

So those bonds which he had come to believe eternal were to be broken?  So he was to lose so easily that beauty which the world had admired, the possession of which had made him feel himself the first among men?  She talked of a love from a distance, of a love persisting through years of separation, travel, all the hazards of a wandering life; she promised to write to him every day!...  Write to him ... from the arms of another man, perhaps!  No!  He would never give up such a treasure; never!

“You shall not go,” he answered at last decisively.  “A love like ours is not ended so easily.  Your flight would be a disgrace to me—­it would look as if I had affronted you in some way, as if you were tired of me.”

Deep in his soul he felt eager to make some chivalrous gesture.  She was going away because she had loved him!  He should stay behind, sad and resigned like a maid abandoned by a lover, and with the sense of having harmed her on his conscience! Ira de dios!  He, as a man, could not stand by with folded arms accepting the abnegation of a woman, to stick tied to his mother’s apron-strings in boobified contentment.  Even girls ran away from home and parents sometimes, in the grip of a powerful love; and he, a man, a man “in the public eye” also—­was he to let a beautiful girl like Leonora go away sorrowful and in tears, so that he could keep the respect of a city that bored him and the affection of a mother who had never really loved him?  Besides, what sort of a love was it that stepped aside in a cowardly, listless way like that, when a woman was at stake, a woman for whom far richer, far more powerful men than he, men bound to life by attractions that he had never dreamed of in his countrified existence, had died or gone to ruin?...

“You shall not go,” he repeated, with sullen obstinacy.  “I won’t give up my happiness so easily.  And if you insist on going, we will go together.”

Leonora rose to her feet all quivering.  She had been expecting that; her heart had told her it was coming.  Flee together!  Have her appear like an adventuress, drawing Rafael on, tearing him from his mother’s arms after crazing him with love?  Oh, no!  Thanks!  She had a conscience!  She did not care to burden it with the execration of a whole city.  Rafael must consider the matter calmly, face the situation bravely.  She must go away alone.  Afterwards, later on, she would see.  They might chance to meet again; perhaps in Madrid, when the Cortes reassembled!  He would be there, and alone; she could find a place at the Real, singing for nothing if that should prove necessary.

But Rafael writhed angrily at her resistance.  He could not live without her!  A single night without seeing her would mean despair.  He would end as Macchia ended!  He would shoot himself!