Raul grinned as Angelina's cue spun balls wickedly across the felt. She had a knack for pool. She and Caterina and Vincente played frequently. If he let himself be absent-minded, she would beat him. The game went pleasantly enough. Manuel brought _copitas_ of brandy and set bottle and tray on the low armoire. Raul used his cue as a staff while Angelina played the nine. This was his favorite room and its familiarity relaxed him. He took in the thick, unpainted ceiling beams, the carved cedar armoire (stained and discolored), the huge roll-top desk with a deer head and a tiger skin above it. The skin was nailed to the wall with silver horseshoe nails. Between the grilled windows of the opposite side of the room, windows that led to the garden, hung a painting of their horse, El Pobre. Who had named the horse--his father, in some fit of anger? El Pobre had been anything but poor. He had outrun and outjumped all hacienda rivals. And when old and spoiled, Uncle Roberto had given him a set of horseshoes with silver nails--a gift typical of Roberto's city humor. French prints, some fencing swords, a piece of Sèvres ware, a gold crucifix, a rack of guns and cues--for Raul it was a perfect room. He wished Lucienne had such a room at her hacienda. Palma Sola had a plainness about it, except for Lucienne's plants and flowers and the nearness of the sea. "You're not thinking of what you're doing," Angelina said, pushing back her hair. "You shouldn't have missed that shot." "I guess I wasn't thinking," Raul said. c"You'll get beaten," she said. "You just watch this play," he said, and sent a ball into a pocket with skilled English. "That was luck, just luck," she said, and her glance took him in nervously. She was a little afraid of him at times. She felt inferior, disliked, shunned. His mind could spread itself over so much. His feeling for life made her hands turn cold. She could not follow his plans. His idea of taking over Petaca--that was idiotic. Better the old ways. What could one man do with seventeen hundred people? What if they were underfed, sick, poor! They had always been that way. He couldn't get anywhere with new-fangled ideas. Those arguments between Raul and his father were pointless. Let the old man have his say ... lying there, in his room, he was still _hacendado_ with whip and gun, unafraid to take and destroy. Outside, in the garden, a man began to sing: Delgado, the gardener. His watering can clinked on the edge of the stone-walled pool. He was singing a Coliman song, pitched rather high; Delgado was seventy and his old throat added a special tremolo to every word. A bird took up his song. "Ave María, ave María, mi corazón es tuya ... ave María." The song floated around a corner of the house, as Delgado walked away.