the sand, and forget.”
“So!” he said, smiling. “You are angry again!”
“It’s not so simple,” she said. “There is a conflict in me. And you won’t let me go away for a time.”
“We can’t even prevent you,” he said.
“Yes, but you are against my going—you don’t let me go in peace.”
“Why must you go?” he said.
“I must,” she said. “I must go back to my children, and my mother.”
“It is a necessity in you?” he said.
“Yes!”
The moment she had admitted the necessity, she realised it was a certain duplicity in herself. It was as if she had two selves: one, a new one, which belonged to Cipriano and to Ramón, and which was her sensitive, desirous self: the other hard and finished, accomplished, belonging to