At twilight, Franchita was returning from escorting her son and was trying to regain her habitual face, her air of haughty indifference, to pass through the village.

But, when she arrived in front of the Detcharry house, she saw Dolores who, instead of going in, as she intended, turned round and stood at the door to see her pass. Something new, some sudden revelation must have impelled her to take this attitude of aggressive defiance, this expression of provoking irony,—and Franchita then stopped, she also, while this phrase, almost involuntary, came through her set teeth:

“What is the matter with that woman? Why does she look at me so—”

“He will not come to-night, the lover, will he?” responded the enemy.

“Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?”

In truth, Dolores knew this since the morning: Gracieuse had told her, since no care needed to be taken of the morrow; Gracieuse had told it wearily, after talking uselessly of Uncle Ignacio, of Ramuntcho's future, of all that would serve their cause—

“Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?”

By a reminiscence of other times, they regained instinctively their theeing and thouing of the sisters' school, those two women who for nearly twenty years had not addressed a word to each other. Why they detested each other, they hardly knew; so many times, it begins thus, with nothings, with jealousies, with childish rivalries, and then, at length, by dint of seeing each other every day without talking to each other, by dint of casting at each other evil looks, it ferments till it becomes implacable hatred.—Here they were, facing each other, and their two voices trembled with rancor, with evil emotion:

“Well,” replied the other, “you knew it before I did, I suppose, you who are without shame and sent him to our house!—Anyway, one can understand your easiness about means, after what you have done in the past—”

And, while Franchita, naturally much more dignified, remained mute, terrified now by this unexpected dispute on the street, Dolores continued:

“No. My daughter marrying that penniless bastard, think of it!—”

“Well, I have the idea that she will marry him, in spite of everything!—Try to propose to her a man of your choice and see—”

Then, as if she disdained to continue, she went on her way, hearing behind her the voice and the insults of the other pursuing her. All her limbs trembled and she faltered at every step on her weakened legs.

At the house, now empty, what sadness she found!

The reality of this separation, which would last for three years, appeared to her under an aspect frightfully new, as if she had hardly been prepared for it—even as, on one's return from a graveyard, one feels for the first time, in its frightful integrity, the absence of the cherished dead—

And then, those words of insult in the street, those words the more crushing because she was cruelly conscious of her sin with the stranger! Instead of passing by, as she should have done, how had she found the courage to stop before her enemy and, by a phrase murmured between her teeth, provoke this odious dispute? How could she have descended to such a thing, forgotten herself thus, she who, for fifteen years, had imposed herself, little by little, on the respect of all by her demeanor, so perfectly dignified. Oh, to have attracted and to have suffered the insult of that Dolores,—whose past was irreproachable and who had, in effect, the right to treat her with contempt! When she reflected, she became frightened more and more by that sort of defiance of the future which she had had the imprudence to hurl; it seemed to her that she had compromised the cherished hope of her son in exasperating thus the hatred of that woman.

Her son!—her Ramuntcho, whom a wagon was carrying away from her at this hour in the summer night, was carrying away from her to a long distance, to danger, to war!—She had assumed very heavy responsibilities in directing his life with ideas of her own, with stubbornness, with pride, with selfishness.—And now, this evening, she had, perhaps, attracted misfortune to him, while he was going away so confident in the joy of his return!—This would be doubtless for her the supreme chastisement; she seemed to hear, in the air of the empty house, something like a threat of this expiation, she felt its slow and sure approach.

Then, she said for him her prayers, from a heart harshly revolted, because religion, as she understood it, remained without sweetness, without consolation, without anything confidential and tender. Her distress and her remorse were, at this moment, of so sombre a nature that tears, benevolent tears, came no longer to her—

And he, at this same instant of the night, continued to descend, through darker valleys, toward the lowland where the trains pass—carrying away men to a long distance, changing and upsetting all things. For about an hour he would continue to be on Basque soil; then, it would end. Along his route, he met some oxcarts, of indolent demeanor, recalling the tranquillities of the olden time; or vague human silhouettes, hailing him with the traditional goodnight, the antique “Gaou-one,” which to-morrow he would cease to hear. And beyond, at his left, in the depth of a sort of black abyss, was the profile of Spain, Spain which, for a very long time doubtless, would trouble his nights no longer—