Just then, guessed Santa, they told Hipólito that she was back, because the piano fell silent abruptly, notes left hanging, and the footsteps of the blind man sounded in the courtyard, his cane tapping incessantly on tiles and walls, his voice softly but urgently alerting the sleeping guide boy:

“Jenaro! Jenaro! Santa is here! This time it's true because Pepa told me …”

“Come in, Hipo!” shouted Santa from the bed as soon as the musician knocked on her door.

And despite the darkness of the room—much less dense and absolute than the darkness inside his horrid, whitish eyes of a bronze statue without patina—the blind man advanced across the floor, exploring it with his cane, until he reached the bed and sensed Santa's presence, whereupon he let go of the cane and lowered his two hands together slowly, slowly, until they rested on one of the girl's shoulders. There he held them, exerting no pressure, in a light caress that was at once idolizing and innocent, before starting to tremble and exclaiming by way of welcome:

“Santita … Santita! But is it possible that you changed your mind so quickly?”

Santa protested that she had not changed her mind, that she still loved the torero. It was he who had repudiated her.

“He threw me out, Hipo, he threw me out! And he came that close to killing me! He was going to stab me …”

Hipólito's silence, as his legs continued to tremble against the edge of the bed and his hands pressed convulsively for just a moment against her soft shoulder, reminded Santa of the blind man's forlorn love and of the cruelty she was committing by telling him the details of what had happened. And because she did not want this admirer of hers to suspect the truth, she agilely played the victim, indirectly (but in a way that Hipólito understood immediately) casting him in the role of possible future aggressor.

“You see what I get for loving one of you? I can't trust any of you, can I?” she said. But as she said it, distractedly or calculatedly, she took the piano player's hand as if to reinforce her point, and Hipólito, smothered in delight, his dreams reborn, leaned over her and answered in a way that only she could understand:

“It's different, Santita, I tell you that it's very, very different …”

All the poetry of his immense affection—immense as only hopeless love can be—was contained in those few, almost indecipherable words.

“Hipo, for the love of your mother, go play! They're getting impatient in the parlor,” declared Pepa, stepping hurriedly into the room.

“Well, I'll please them, then, even if I have to play all night.”

Hipólito searched a moment for his cane on the floor, found it quickly, rose smiling, and stepped nimbly to the door, where he added:

“Pepa, tonight I'm even going to play Verdi for you! You just wait!”

That night a substantial number of customers filled the establishment, but no matter. The women were much less interested in business than in the impending costume ball, which exerted a powerful attraction on the rental bodies and atrophied minds of these poor social outcasts.