Lima is the destination of Clara Stauffer’s proposed final journey with Manuel Arroyo Benítez, but he refuses to go. The invitation brings their relationship to a decisive end: Clara returns alone, while Manuel chooses the home, work, and new attachment he has found in Argentina.

The Planned Journey

Clara explains that her stay in Hispano-America has been political work, not a holiday. She has contacted their supporters, visited those already settled there, prepared for future arrivals, and met with a government that has been helping them. Her next stop is Lima, where she expects both to attend the October Fair and to consolidate their work in Peru and then Bolivia. She plans to visit Santiago de Chile as well before returning to Buenos Aires to board a ship for Spain.

The Invitation and Refusal

After the other guests disperse from the poolside, Clara invites Manuel to walk with her in the garden. She tells him that he has been an attentive and generous traveling companion and that they may not see each other again for many years, perhaps ever. She asks him to leave his job and accompany her to Lima, framing it as a private last trip together. She admits that she likes him and stresses that, far from Spain and among people who do not know them, they could enjoy the journey alone.

Manuel initially says that he would love to go, but he is buying time rather than accepting. He then refuses. His explanation is not a rejection of the journey’s appeal so much as a statement of what he can no longer abandon: since enlisting to go to Russia, he has had no home, family, possessions, or peace to make plans for the future. In Argentina, he has started again, with a normal life, good work, projects, and hopes.

Separation and Significance

Manuel adds that he has met a woman he likes and cannot leave her, or give up everything he has found, all at once. Clara raises a hand to indicate that she does not want to hear more, but he continues explaining as she walks ahead of him. The physical distance in the garden becomes a parting: she eventually tells him, in a haughty tone he has not heard from her before, that she will return to the city alone and that he will have to find his own way back.

Clara leaves without a kiss, an embrace, or a promise to meet again. Manuel never sees her again. Lima consequently remains not a place they reach together, but the unrealized destination that marks his choice of a fragile, newly recovered life over another departure.