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The bohemians continued their disordered existence, their everlasting projects, until a gap was opened in their midst. Santín was missing. One day he did not show up at the café, the next he did not appear at the studio, and in a few weeks he was nowhere to be seen.

“Where can that fool be?” they asked one another.

Nobody knew.

One night Varela, one of the writers, announced that he had caught sight of Bernardo Santín sauntering along Recoletos in company of a blonde girl who looked like an Englishwoman.

“The confounded idiot!” exclaimed one of the group.

“That’s old stuff,” replied another. “Schopenhauer said long ago that it’s fools who are most successful with women.”

“I wonder where he got this Englishwoman.”

“That ingle woman!ssss1 He must have got her out of his groin!” suggested a callow youth, who was learning how to write farces.

“Ugh! These cheap jokes are enough to drive a man to drink!” cried several in chorus.

The talk drifted to other topics. Three days after this conversation Santín appeared at the café. He was welcomed with a noisy demonstration, spoons drumming against saucers. When the ovation had ended, they besieged him with the question: