SUNSET by Paz M. Latorena

Last

But even the night brought nothing. Close to him in the dark she waited in vain for the words that would make of their life together a beautiful symphony, not the sordid interlude it was threatening to be.

Seen through the little window, the sky of night, so smooth, so bestarred, looked wrinkled through her screen of unshed tears. Her thoughts release at last, kept her company through the long night like so many shadow specters. And something she could only feel but no name assumed definite proportions with the dawn.

The new day brought his surprise―it was carefully wrapped in fine white paper, and he had in his pocket when he arrived home from the market. At first she did not want to unwrap the small package. Truth hung by a hair and as long as it hung, she could swear it was a lie. When she finally did, she was conscious of a sharp and indignant agony.

She did not ask questions about it. And she noticed that he was relieved as he was surprised by her strange lack of curiosity.

It was a pretty although inexpensive little thing―a square violet scarf of thin silk with a small tassels all around. But she wore the old faded one when, three days later, she told him she had found another job.

"But why?" he wanted to know. "I am not earning much but…"

"We cannot go on like this," she spoke low to keep the bitterness out of her voice, "it is not right."

"You mean…"

"Yes. Let us both work and save money. Then perhaps…"

She watched his face keenly. There was not even the flicker of an eyelash to betray him.

"Where will you work this time?" he asked for a long silence. She had only to show the card the señorita had given her. But her knowledge of the whole torturing incident prevented her from doing so.

"Somewhere not very far from here," she told him lightly.

A gift was a gift, she reminded herself fiercely. She had given him that money through theseñorita without his asking for it, freely, to do with it as he liked. And she chose to let her go.

She left late the next afternoon. He wanted to go with her but she asked him not to, promising to send him word and her address later.

"The fish is under the basin, near the stove," she reminded him as he helped her into thecarretela that was waiting for her.

He gave her a bundle, the clothes of his dead mother which he had insisted on her taking with her. His face was pale in the late afternoon light, his hands were none too steady. She smiled compassionate divinity looking down on the puny sins of man.

She was still smiling as the horse started. At the end of the street she turned her head and waved her hand to him as he stood by the gate in the failing darkness.