It was fifteen years ago, fifteen years, when she returned,
clandestinely, at a fall of night similar to this one. In the first days
of this return, dumb and haughty to her former companions from fear of
their disdain, she would go out only to go to church, her black cloth
mantilla lowered on her eyes. Then, at length, when curiosity was
appeased, she had returned to her habits, so valiantly and so
irreproachably that all had forgiven her.

To greet and embrace her son she smiled with joy and tenderness, but,
silent by nature and reserved as both were, they said to each other only
what it was useful to say.

He sat at his accustomed place to eat the soup and the smoking dish which
she served to him without speaking. The room, carefully kalsomined, was
made gay by the sudden light of a flame of branches in the tall and wide
chimney ornamented with a festoon of white calico. In frames, hooked in
good order, there were images of Ramuntcho's first communion and
different figures of saints with Basque legends; then the Virgin of
Pilar, the Virgin of Anguish, and rosaries, and blessed palms. The
kitchen utensils shone, in a line on shelves sealed to the walls; every
shelf ornamented with one of those pink paper frills, cut in designs,
which are manufactured in Spain and on which are printed, invariably,
series of personages dancing with castanets, or scenes in the lives of
the toreadors. In this white interior, before this joyful and clear
chimney, one felt an impression of home, a tranquil welfare, which was
augmented by the notion of the vast, wet, surrounding night, of the grand
darkness of the valleys, of the mountains and of the woods.

Franchita, as every evening, looked long at her son, looked at him
embellishing and growing, taking more and more an air of decision and of