Once Don Gonzalo and Dona Laura realize that they are the same old, young lovers of Maricela who were separated in life by fate, they decide not to reveal their identity because they learn from each other in what high esteem they held each other before they departed, they also come to know that both of them had given up the other as lost forever. While Dona Laura tells herself that she had married someone else after waiting for him for one year, Don Gonzalo tells himself that after fleeing from Valencia, then Seville and Madrid, he had run off to Paris with a ballet dancer in about three months.
Therefore, they concoct fictitious stories so as to conceal their identities completely and to make the other believe that he or she was dead. Later, when they realize that they are alive, they do not want to shatter their mutual images in the eyes of the other. Therefore, Don Gonzalo tells himself that he will not reveal himself because he is grotesque. He wishes that she had better recall the gallant horseman who passed daily beneath her window tossing flowers. Similarly, Dona Laura tells herself that “I am too sadly changed. It is better he should remember me as the black-
eyed girl tossing flowers as he passed among the roses in the garden.”
