In a little while Ignacio would return, shuffling, smoking a dangling
cigarette, his hat cocked against the sun; he would give her full
particulars and then return to his bell. . . . She had come to San
Juan to make a home here, to become a part of it, to make it a portion
of her. To arrive upon a day like this was no pleasant omen; it was
too dreadfully like taking a room in a house only to hear the life
rattling out of a man beyond a partition. She was suddenly averse to
hearing Ignacio's details; there came a quick desire to set her back to
the town whose silence on the heels of uproar crushed her. Rising
hastily, she hurried down the weed-bordered walk, out at the broken
gate, and turned toward the mountains. One glance down the street as
she crossed it showed her what she had expected: a knot of men at the
door of the Casa Blanca, another small group at a window, evidently
taking stock of a broken window-pane.
The sun, angry and red, was hanging low over a distant line of hills,
the flat lands were already drawing about them a thin, faintly colorful
haze. She had put on her hat and, like Ignacio, had set it a little to
the side of her head, feeling her cheeks burning when the direct rays
found them. The fine, loose soil was sifting into her low slippers
before she had gone a score of paces.
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