And distractedly, the girl began to look carefully at the windows of beauty shops that displayed masks, wigs, and other disguises. Today, Sunday, was the first day of carnival.

Eufrasia's reaction when she opened the door and saw Santa surpasses description. She hugged her, lifted her off the floor, caressed her cheeks, her waist, her clothing. She was so, so happy that the pride and happiness of the house had returned! Doña Pepa, doña Elivra, and the girls would be astonished, too, because no one expected her!

“And don Hipólito, the piano player, might just recover his sight when he hears! Doña Pepa! Doña Pepa! …” shouted the ecstatic servant from the bottom of the stairs in a rush to convey the glad tidings. “Good news, doña Pepa! She's back! Santita is here again! … They're having supper,” she explained to Santa.

There was a true uproar in the dining room, a sound of spilled dishes and falling chairs, then many hugs and kisses for the returnee, curiosity in glances and salutations, some sincere jubilation, some renewed envy.

“What has happened to you, woman?” asked Pepa when the din diminished. “Have you had supper?”

Before she could reply, Santa's nerves let loose. The jumbled and repressed emotions of the afternoon awoke: happy feelings because of the warm reception, but bitter feelings because she saw how far she had sunk, that being in a brothel comforted her. The emotions choked off her voice, and, instead of words, what came were tears as she sat beside Pepa at the head of the long, noisy table.

“What's that about?” asked Pepa, absently fondling the wisps of hair at the nape of Santa's neck. “Dummy! He'll change his mind, and if he doesn't, who cares? This world is full of trousers, but not full of pretty things like you. What did you quarrel about, anyway?”

“It's a miracle that he didn't kill me today, Pepa!” said Santa, finally, sitting up in her chair. “And I'm afraid the he still may try to kill me.”

“What did you do to him?” asked Pepa neutrally, chomping on her habitual cigar.

So responsible did Santa seem to feel for what had happened, that she could not confess it even there, there, where indulgences and pardons in such matters are easily obtainable. Instead, her eyes on the tablecloth in order to better dissimulate her lie, she answered merely:

“Me? … Nothing! It was jealousy, the damned jealousy that girls like us always get from men!”

Pepa, incredulous and quite expert in sniffing out infidelities, did not insist. Instead, she waved her lit match in a vague and expansive gesture that seemed intended to illuminate, with the tiny flame, a vast assortment of deceptions and other failings that play havoc with love. It was probably just as Santa claimed, she appeared to indicate, lighting her cigar with the meticulous care of a connoisseur and the phlegmatic calm of a philosopher unfazed by irremediable human frailties.

Nor did the other women swallow Santa's story. Jealousy? True, jealousy might occasionally be without foundation, but more often, and most especially with women like them, who, in order to continue their unhappy existence, make of deception a habit, of infidelity an incentive, and of forgetfulness a necessity—with them jealousy was almost always well founded. Consequently, if the torero had tried to kill Santa, he probably had a reason, and if some of the women tended to excuse her behavior, others censured it out of pure envy. What more could Santa ask than to live with a man who offered her both love and money? How presumptuous of her!