“That is the language you should have used to me from the beginning,” said the engineer, drawing a deep breath, as if his mind had been relieved from an enormous weight.  “I am greatly obliged to you for those words.  After having been stabbed in the dark, this blow on the face in the light of day is a great satisfaction to me.”

“Well, I will repeat the blow, nephew,” declared Dona Perfecta, with as much energy as displeasure.  “You know it now—­I do not wish you to marry Rosario!”

Pepe was silent.  There was a long pause, during which the two regarded each other attentively, as if the face of each was for the other the most perfect work of art.

“Don’t you understand what I have said to you?” she repeated.  “That every thing is at an end, that there is to be no marriage.”

“Permit me, dear aunt,” said the young man, with composure, “not to be terrified by the intimation.  In the state at which things have arrived your refusal has little importance for me.”

“What are you saying?” cried Dona Perfecta violently.

“What you hear.  I will marry Rosario!”

Dona Perfecta rose to her feet, indignant, majestic, terrible.  Her attitude was that of anathema incarnated in a woman.  Rey remained seated, serene, courageous, with the passive courage of a profound conviction and an immovable resolve.  The whole weight of his aunt’s wrath, threatening to overwhelm him, did not make him move an eyelash.  This was his character.

“You are mad.  Marry my daughter, you!  Marry her against my will!”

Dona Perfecta’s trembling lips articulated these words in a truly tragic tone.

“Against your will!  She is of a different way of thinking.”

“Against my will!” repeated Dona Perfecta.  “Yes, and I repeat it again and again.  I do not wish it, I do not wish it!”

“She and I wish it.”

“Fool!  Is nothing else in the world to be considered but her and you?  Are there not parents; is there not society; is there not a conscience; is there not a God?”

“Because there is society, because there is a conscience, because there is a God,” affirmed Rey gravely, rising to his feet, and pointing with outstretched arm to the heavens, “I say and I repeat that I will marry her.”

“Wretch! arrogant man!  And if you would dare to trample every thing under your feet, do you think there are not laws to prevent your violence?”

“Because there are laws, I say and I repeat that I will marry her.”

“You respect nothing!”

“Nothing that is unworthy of respect.”

“And my authority, my will, I—­am I nothing?”

“For me your daughter is every thing—­the rest is nothing.”

Pepe Rey’s composure was, so to say, the arrogant display of invincible and conscious strength.  The blows he gave were hard and crushing in their force, without any thing to mitigate their severity.  His words, if the comparison may be allowed, were like a pitiless discharge of artillery.