What is the old man talking about? Clearly he enjoys listening to himself. He savors the easy glide of his words. He is pleased. But you can’t listen to him. He is treacherous. Among his circumlocutions Idolina grasps his intention: he is trying to separate her from Julia. Why? He says Julia is not a fit companion. No? Then who is? Idolina doesn’t know the girls of Ciudad Real. And she fears them. From behind her window she has watched them go by. They walk with their eyes lowered. They whisper. At dusk, they go into the street with their faces concealed behind a shawl. Where are they going? What are they looking for? The next day they remember and smile at each other. There is no place among them for Idolina; she belongs to another species.

The bishop doesn’t dare state the definitive accusation against Julia in so many words. But between one reticence and another an image emerges: adultery. And the outline of the protagonists is sketched in: La Alazana and Leonardo.

Idolina’s first impulse is to shout that people are telling lies about them. But an instant’s consideration silences her. Her stepfather is certainly capable of such a thing. And the thought of how her mother must be suffering anesthetizes Idolina, keeps her from thinking of her own pain.

Until afterward when she feels the wound in solitude. She has been betrayed again, in the same way, with the same man. Idolina hates Cifuentes with a loathing in which secret admiration and an obscure envy are mingled.

There she sits in a corner, powerless, while the blood pounds inside her and she gasps for air.