THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS
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am too, though I was born over here and have never been over
there."
"Did you never want to go?"
"Oh, most awfully. I wanted to study there but my father
wouldn't let me. I went to England instead-and then to the Argen–
tine, for the cattle stuff."
He understood her careless glance around the room. When she
caught his eye, she flushed and he smiled.
"At home," she hurried to explain, "you would have an office
that showed you had been abroad."
"Maybe I will, when I go there."
"Why wouldn't your father let you?"
"He was in the revolution against Spain and in the resistance
against the Americans, and when both uprisings f.ailed he came and
settled here and swore not to go home, neither himself nor his sons,
until it was a free country again."
"Well, it is now."
"And he did go back, last year. But he didn't stay long. Now
we're trying to persuade him to make another visit."
"But why wouldn't he stay? Was he frightened?"
She had leaned forward and the pearls gleamed.
Her face blurred before him as, growing sad, he thought of
his father in the next room, sitting in an armchair, a shawl around
his
shoulders and his feet propped up on a stool and no hope at all
in
the quiet eyes fixedly staring ahead . . .
The girl's eyes were fixedly staring ahead too, and he drew
back-though there was all the table between them- rather alarmed
by the intensity of her regard and having fleetingly felt how odd
that there should be in this room with him, making its furniture
hover; that there should be seated before his desk, making its papers
uneasy-in black furs and a black hat, with gray gloves on her hands
and pearls at her throat-a woman who had two navels. But her
eyes stopped short of him; the pause was hers alone; she had for–
gotten her question and was not awaiting the answer that he (the
room having organized itself again around his old desk) was about
to speak when she suddenly shivered and came to.
Sitting up and blinking away the tears while she fetched out
