The ensuing struggle was brief, the sort that occurs in ordinary people who do not think profound theological thoughts and let themselves be guided by instinct. And Santa's instinct told her to go to a church, light a candle for the soul of her deceased mother, and pray for her eternal rest—everything that she had been taught to do for the dead. She thought that it was mortally sinful for a prostitute to enter a church. But the deceased was her mother, and she had to pray for her. Was she going to pray for her mother's soul in a brothel or a hotel? How horrible, oh saints in heaven! No, she wasn't. And, anyway, she had begun to want to change her life … yes, change her life, and why not? Or was that the only way that she could make a living? Women made a living in all sorts of ways, after all, women abandoned by their seducers, just as she had been, women who sometimes had children, too. It was time to do like them and get to work, because she was plenty strong and healthy. What would she do? … Washing? Ironing? Housekeeping? … No, not housekeeping. She wouldn't be a maid for any amount of wages. But anything else, yes, whatever turned up … And she went on planning her future repentance and recovery, which she would accomplish much more slowly than her fall, admittedly, but which she would not waver in completing finally, by dint of sustained effort. True, the path would not be easy to tread. So thorny did it appear, even before starting out, that she felt somewhat daunted. And true, her meditations on projects of reform were occasionally interrupted by quick images of various not-so-disagreeable friends from her life of sin, men who might enable her to continue in an infallible health and wellbeing that only an already compromised mind like Santa's could ever believe in: Rubio, for instance, who had repeatedly offered to make her his mistress in a house of her own; the young fellow who treated her breathlessly, as if she were his fiancée; the old man who asked for very complicated indecencies that she thought were fun. Even the image of Hipólito flitted past for reasons that she could not understand, since the blind man offered nothing, especially in contrast to the other whose image crossed the path of reform most insistently and disruptively: el Jarameño. How annoying the torero was, with his relentless pursuit of her! … All right, then, so that's it? … That's it. A plan! Get rid of all of them, and, if necessary butt her head against the church wall!

Because she lay turned toward the wall with her eyes closed, lost in thought as she elaborated her plan, Santa did not hear when the chambermaid entered and deposited on a chair the dark dress and shawl sent by la Gaditana. When she found the clothes suddenly within reach, as if by magic, she took it as a sign to find a church immediately. She would go, yes, she would! Feverishly, she splashed the tepid water of the washbasin on her eyes, swollen from much weeping and little sleep. She dressed quickly, and, extracting a wad of bills from one of her stockings, paid the bill.