“Darn,” murmured Gallegos, stepping into the middle of the hallway for a better look, “the maestro's got himself quite a woman!”

“Doña Nicasia,” said el Jarameño at that very moment, getting straight to the point, “here you have the woman who has captivated my heart and agreed to come live with me so that I don't die from lovesickness … She'll be the queen here … yours, mine, everybody's … So, that's it … If anybody doesn't like it, they can just leave, and if everybody doesn't like it, everybody can leave, because I'll pay for the whole house and the whole world, too. The lady's name is Santa, doña Nicasia. Will you take good care of her? Santa, come here my glory, come meet the patrona.”

In the way women have of never forgetting certain gestures and expressions that suit them particularly well, Santa instinctively recovered the superb air that had adorned her in better times, her captivating air of country candor. All she had to do, in order to win over doña Nicasia utterly, was step into the lamp light and smile. Although the patrona did not, at that moment, welcome Santa as enthusiastically as she might have (despite already guessing what enormous and sorely needed benefits might accrue if she were willing to avert her eyes from the irregularities of the situation) it was only because she wanted to avoid irritating Sordo or incurring the ecclesiastical wrath of the resident priest. She quietly returned Santa's greeting and left the room.

Then, quickly and discretely, doña Nicasia convened an executive council meeting—Sordo, don Práxedes, and she—in her bedroom, and they speedily arrived at an agreement.

“Don't you think, father, that there's no problem as long as those involved are respectable people? Wouldn't you agree?” insisted Sordo, who took the initiative.

And, in the face of the evident assent on the part of both doña Nicasia and don Práxedes, who expressed his approval by raising his arm as if distributing blessings to his parishioners, the two male councilmen rejoined the gathering in the parlor while the patrona tried to get el Jarameño to open the door of his bedroom.

“It's me, Jarameño,” she shouted. “Open the door. It's me! Both of you can stay, just like you wanted …”

No answer emerged from the darkness behind the locked door, and nothing could be seen through the keyhole, either. The only faint sound was that of kisses and mutual caresses, the awesome, triumphal hymn of the Flesh.

El Jarameño and Santa were finally offering to one another the princely gift of their bodies, their youth, and their beauty. The ceremony took place in silence and shadow: the silence interrupted only by the diffuse echo of lips meeting lips or exploring sweet and silky skin, long adored at a distance; the shadow attenuated only by the glow of their burning desire, long repressed, although life and love are short … The entire Guipuzcoana Boarding House gradually filled with, and was transfigured by, the love that seeped out of the bedroom through the cracks in the door, as if calm, invisible hands were quietly distributing incense throughout the structure, banishing envy, vulgarity, covetousness, and the other unworthy emotions that one commonly breathed in its rooms. Santa and el Jarameño were not, at that moment, merely a prostitute and bullfighter who, spurred by crude, lewd desire, had shut themselves in a shabby, rented room to satisfy themselves. No. They were the eternal pair, intoning the sacrosanct, eternal duet. They were love and beauty personified, and this was their consecration.