Alcira would ask his neighbor:

"How do we vote? Yes or no?"

The same it was at night at the Opera, where music served only to remind
him of a familiar voice winding like a thread of gold out across the
orchards through the orange trees; and the same again, after dinner with
his colleagues on committees, when the deputies, their cigars tilted
cockily upwards between their lips, and with all the voluptuous gaiety
inspired by good digestions, would troop off to see the night out in
some trustworthy house of assignation where their dignity as
representatives of the country would not be compromised!

Now that blue house was actually before his eyes! And he was hurrying
toward it,--not without some hesitation; a vague uneasiness he could not
explain. His heart was in his mouth, it seemed, and he found it hard to
breathe.

Orchard workers came along the road, occasionally, stepping aside to
make room for the famous man, though he answered their greeting
absent-mindedly. What a nuisance! They would all be sure to tell where
they had seen him! His mother would know all about it within half an
hour! And, that evening, a scene in the dining-room! As Rafael walked on
toward the Blue House, he thought bitterly of his situation. Why was he
going there anyhow? Why insist on living in a stew all the time? He had
had two or three short but violent scenes with his mother a few months
before. What a fury that stern, pious, and puritanic woman became when
she found out that her son had been calling down at the Blue House and
was on friendly terms with a strange lady, an outsider, whom the
respectable folk of the city would have nothing to do with, and of whom