“Maybe you taught him,” he suggested slyly. She understood. “Ah, now, Ricardo, you are wrong. Yes, you are wrong. Once I was quick-tempered, perhaps. But I am not _brava_ now. No, no. I have learned better. And Juan was happy with me.” Ricardo was sober again. Suddenly, nostrils swelling, he threw up his head. “Sometimes I think of going to join _La Gente_, too,” he said. “Do not be a fool,” Antonia returned. “Within the hour I start for Carenero. But”--her voice was lowered engagingly--“I will stay here if you wish it.” But Ricardo, having tossed aside his cigarette, was pulling nervously at a curly lock and edging away. “_Adiós_,” he said, with more troubled glances toward home. “A pleasant journey. _Adiós._” “_Adiós_,” echoed the other regretfully. All this while, from her one window, Manuelita had been watching. She had seen Ricardo stop before Antonia’s, seen him light her _tabaco_, and their talking back and forth. And as he started for his hut once more, she scolded to herself in a passionate undertone, she stamped the floor with an angry foot. He had made of her an object for further taunting. He had made her the laughingstock of the San Jacinto. “_Madre de Dios!_” she exclaimed over and over, her lips white with rage and mortification. “But I shall punish him for this!” Ricardo had scarce entered, her name on his tongue, when the full volume of her ire burst upon him with tropical rigor and suddenness. “So you have been to see that crooked face,” she cried furiously. “You sneak, you! you that are full of lies!” Not altogether surprised, he strove to meet her attack by replying, to stem it through endearments. She would not hear. She would have none of his caresses. And he could do nothing but seat himself on a bull’s-hide chair, rest his chin somewhat sheepishly on his breast, and listen. “Oh, I will not stay with you another day,” she vowed, breath and wits taxed at last for epithets. “I, a girl that all have desired, that could have a better house, yes, one covered with pink stucco, and finer clothes, and shoes, and even a ring or two, and no work, and all the cigarettes I want--here I am with you, who are coiled like a _culebra_, ready to sting, to kill. You coward!” “I have always treated you well,” retorted Ricardo sulkily, “and I am not a coward. I shall show you. I shall go to fight with the Revolutionists.” “Go, go, go,” she answered. “_I_ shall not mourn. You cannot shame me before them all. Go, and take her with you!” She flung herself upon the bed, without a look at him, without a thought for their supperless baby, curled up on a gunny sack by the door. There, worn out with the violence of her quarrelling, she sobbed herself to sleep.