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98 [ 9 ] M ySTE RIOUS M E ETING For three or Four nights the same scene played out, if with some variants in the details, then identical in substance. Since Doña Costanza was always surrounded during the day by girlfriends and male admirers, no opportunity arose for her cousin to talk to her in secret. A fleeting glance would usually cross between both of them, but so confused on her part that were it noticed by someone it could not have been interpreted in a way that would have compromised them. At night, with the same circumspection and the same precautions , they would meet and renew their conversations at the garden grille, but love made no headway. The butterfly always fluttered round the light and did not get burned. The inclination to love was not changing into love. Don Faustino’s hopes were neither materializing nor fading. As long as he was at her side he felt himself under the power of a spell. He submitted to everything. He was credulous like a child and submissive like a slave. He found no reason to object to the long rejoinders with which she would hold him off, and he considered himself fortunate indeed and more than compensated to receive, in exchange for his devotion and an already declared love, those vague promises of possible love, that propensity for affection, that prelude to a relationship with which Doña Costanza had him enraptured and wanting in judgment. Soon, however, after the initial transport had passed, and MySTE RIOUS ME E TING 99 when he was not in Doña Costanza’s presence, a thousand not very flattering thoughts began to assail the doctor. Why all this mystery in our relationship? he wondered. What would my cousin lose by showing in front of the people who pay the most attention to me, who show me the most consideration, that she’s beginning to love me a little? isn’t there a certain hypocrisy, isn’t there a certain duplicity in her behavior? The excuse that Doctor Faustino found for this offset in part his cousin’s good intention, but, on the other hand, it was unfavorable to his vanity and to his aspirations. my cousin is undoubtedly waiting for this propensity that she has to love me to be converted into de facto love, for this germ of passion to be born and grow and develop . So long as this does not occur, i live with the threat that her love may die before it is born, or that it may not be love but a vague sympathy that she feels for me. This sympathy can vanish like smoke, and costancita, foreseeing that it can vanish , does not want it to leave a trace or a sign. my cousin is pampered and has an innocent appearance, but behind her finicky and childish conduct, is there not a refinement of pretense, of sang-froid, and of relentless calculation? is she not toying with my heart, with my feelings, and even with my dignity? is not the uncertainty in which she’s leaving me cruel? is it right that i should be her plaything so that she can ask herself: do i love him or do i not love him? and that she doesn’t know the answer? Several counterarguments, not without some merit, occurred to the doctor in opposition to the above reflections. do you suppose i’m too demanding? he thought. What right do i have to expect her to love me already? What right do i have to even expect that my love be believed? until not too long ago, did i myself not doubt my own love? So why find it odd that she should doubt it? how, then, to blame my cousin because she does not hand her heart over to me without reservation, not being sure herself of the sincerity, of the tenderness, of the devotion of mine? What proof of love have i given to her till now? What sacrifice have i made for her? in truth, not a one. To go and see her, to talk to her, to kiss her pretty hand at the garden grille, far from being a sacrifice is a pleasure and a delight. and in exchange for such sweet favors, i cannot even show a little patience, much less have some trust in her good faith and sound intentions. Thus did the doctor take his cousin to task, and thus did...

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