The penitential mass had been celebrated, and Paoletti had gone into the room where his saintly daughter lay dying in alternate torments of fever and doubt, when Leon, hurrying from room to room, went in search of Pepa. He found her at last in Ramona’s room. He had something very important to say to her and it might be supposed that Pepa was expecting this, for she was standing breathless, with her eyes fixed on the door, listening for his footstep, and as he entered she went a few paces towards a recess in the room, suggesting to him by the expression of her steps—for steps, too, have a language of their own—that they would talk more at their ease there than anywhere else. Monina ran to meet him and threw her arms round his legs, looking up in his face. He took her up, and the child, finding herself perched so high, began teasing him to admire the artistic beauties of a small clay vase with a handle and spout, a recent gift from the priest of Polvoranca, and then amused herself by holding on to his ear.

“Monina, be quiet—do not be troublesome,” said her mother. “I know—yes I know what you have come to say.—Child be quiet; come to me.”

She took Monina from Leon’s arms and held her in her own. “You need not tell me; I understand—I know—I must go away. I had made up my mind to it, even if I were forced to leave without seeing you.”

“I appreciate your delicacy,” said Leon. “Yes, go to your house in Madrid, and for the present forget my existence.”

“That I can hardly do.—Child, you are choking me,” said Pepa to Monina who was now pulling her mother’s ear. “Get down and run away.—But I will go, without even asking when I am to see you again. I dread to ask and I feel for you in having to give me a reply.”

Leon looked down and said nothing. There was not a kind word, a friendly formality, a common expression of hope even, which, on his lips, would not require a criminal accent. Silence seemed to him more decorous than any protestation of purity of purpose. They both were speechless for some little time, not daring to look at each other, each dreading to read the other’s face and knowing that it would reflect his—or her—own feelings.

“Ask me nothing—tell me nothing—do not utter even a name that can appeal to her,” Leon said at length. “Keep your heart full of generous feeling, and dismiss all hope.”

Pepa wanted to say something, but her voice was so tremulous that she could not: “Nothing will be left me,” she thought to herself, “nothing but the old dreary miserable thought: she will pray and pray—and live; I, hoping and still hoping, shall die.”

Leon who seemed to read her thoughts in her contracted brow, said, looking into her face:

“It is in critical moments that the generosity or selfishness of a soul is revealed.”

Pepa was trembling in every limb; she propped her head on one hand, and looking down at her knees, on which Ramona’s tiny fingers were playing a tune, she said:

“I do not know whether mine is generous or selfish. I only know that I shed many tears just now in praying that God would let no one die for my happiness. How bitter our prayers can sometimes be! How cruelly our thoughts can torture us in the effort to prevent the flowers we must pluck and cast out turning into snakes! I have prayed more to-day than in any one day of my life before; but I cannot be sure of having prayed rightly and from a pure heart. The battle raged within me; I believe that the words I used had a different meaning every minute—that the name of God meant the Devil—that love meant hate, and life stood for death. The feeling and the thought were struggling for the mastery and each tried to find expression in words.—I did not really pray, I was not really good; and yet, indeed, indeed, I meant to be. I am so much a woman, so little of a saint.—But I shall not feel so wicked when I have found courage enough to pray clearly and boldly that we may both die—then everything will come right....”

She rose.

“In short,” she said, “I am going. You know that my only joy in life is to obey you.”

“Thanks—thanks...” murmured Leon, taking up Monina.

“Say good-bye,” said Pepa, fixing a tender gaze on the child and the man who held her.

Leon held the little girl in a close embrace and kissed her again and again; such demonstrations of affection, he reflected, could hardly be deemed a scandal when bestowed on this angel-baby. He carried her up and down the room two or three times to conceal the emotion which, rebelling against every moral effort, was too legible in his face; and though he did not glance at the mother, she, sitting in her corner, might be sure that he was conscious of her presence. Passion has the keenest sight, and wonderful skill in discovering the thoughts of the object of its devotion, in assimilating them and extracting nutriment from this exciting but ethereal food.

As to the unhappy man himself, never had he so deeply felt as at this moment the irresistible charm of this sweet little creature—the child of a woman who was not his wife, and of a man whom he detested. He felt as if it would be impossible to part from this treasure and live—not that it was his, though he had accustomed himself to regard it as very much his own. His love for the child was as inseparable from the image of its mother as two stars that give but one light. It was an adopted affection which usurped in his solitary soul the vacant hearth and warming fire that ought to have been for another. Was it his fault if in his weary journeying across the waste these two faces smiled upon him, one all dimples and the other all love, brightening the melancholy horizon of life and encouraging him to walk on, even when his strength was failing him, and he stumbled over the stones and thorns. In Pepa he had found affection, gentleness and a confiding nature—a mysterious promise of the peace he had dreamed of, the happiness he had so vainly and so painfully sought. It was the ideal family, with every human element in it except, alas! legitimacy; and the very fact of its being only a vision and not a reality, gave it added enchantment and greater attractions. Pepa’s passionate devotion, and the tenacity which made her give it the pre-eminence over every other feeling, far from causing him any anxiety, altogether bewitched him; he saw in it the offering of her whole heart without reserve, the incalculating generosity which prompts a soul to abandon itself wholly without any concealment, without cloking its faults or veiling a single thought. Those who have been beggars for love cannot repel that which flows in their way, though the tide be too strong and boils and foams. At the same time he felt a sort of pride and pious emotion as he saw that this noble heart, without ceasing to be duteously religious, was nevertheless his, by a supreme law of humanity; and feeling himself so beloved—so completely the lord and master of her thoughts he could do no less than give his heart wholly to her. That secondary and long-past affection that he had known before the dawn of the glory in which they now saw each other faded into nothingness, as the stars do at sunrise.

However, this was not the moment for such reflections. Leon set the child on her mother’s knee and said:

“Not another instant! Good-bye. If I find it necessary to explain your absence to your father I will venture to tell him all about it.”

“I will tell him myself.”

And they precipitately left the room by different doors.