Why were the windows of the house of the alfÉrez not only without lanterns, but shuttered? Where, when the procession passed, were the masculine head with its great veins and purple lips, the flannel shirt, and the big cigar of the “Muse of the Municipal Guard”?

The house was sad, as Sinang said, because the people were gay. Had not a sentinel paced as usual before the door one might have thought the place uninhabited.

A feeble light showed the disorder of the room, where the alfÉreza was sitting, and pierced the dusty and spider-webbed conches of the windows. The dame, according to her idle custom, was dozing in a fauteuil. To deaden the sound of the bombs, she had coifed her head in a handkerchief, from which escaped her tangled hair, short and thin. This morning she had not been to mass, not because she did not wish it, but because her husband had not permitted it, accompanying his prohibition with oaths and threats of blows. DoÑa Consolacion was now dreaming of revenge. She bestirred herself at last and ran over the house from one end to the other, her dark face disquieting to look at. A spark flashed from her eyes like that from the pupil of a serpent trapped and about to be crushed. It was cold, luminous, penetrating; it was viscous, cruel, repulsive. The smallest error on the part of a servant, the least noise, drew forth words injurious enough to smirch the soul; but nobody replied; to offer excuse would have been to commit another crime.

In this way the day passed. Meeting no opposition—her husband had been invited to the gobernadorcillo’s—she stored up spleen; the cells of her organism seemed slowly charging with electric force, which burst out, later on, in a tempest.

Sisa had been in the barracks since her arrest the day before. The alfÉrez, fearing she might become the sport of the crowd, had ordered her to be kept until the fÊte was over.

This evening, whether she had heard the song of Maria Clara, whether the bands had recalled airs that she knew, for some reason she began to chant, in her sympathetic voice, the songs of her youth. The soldiers heard and became still; they knew these airs, had sung them themselves when they were young and free and innocent. DoÑa Consolacion heard, too, and inquired for the singer.

“Have her come up at once,” she said, after a moment’s reflection, something like a smile flickering on her dry lips.

The soldiers brought Sisa, who came without fear or question. When she entered she seemed to see no one, which wounded the vanity of the dreadful muse. DoÑa Consolacion coughed, motioned the soldiers to withdraw, and, taking down her husband’s riding whip, said in a sinister voice:

“Vamos, magcanter icau!”

It was an order to sing, in a mixture of Castilian and Tagalo. DoÑa Consolacion affected ignorance of her native tongue, thinking thus to give herself the air of a veritable Orofea, as she said in her attempt at Europea. For if she martyred the Tagalo, she treated Castilian worse, though her husband, and chairs and shoes, had contributed to giving her lessons.

Sisa had been happy enough not to understand. The forehead of the shrew unknotted a bit, and a look of satisfaction animated her face.

“Tell this woman to sing!” she said to the orderly. “She doesn’t understand; she doesn’t know Spanish!”

The orderly spoke to Sisa, and she began at once the “Night Song.”

At first DoÑa Consolacion listened with a mocking smile, but little by little it left her lips. She became attentive, then serious. Her dry and withered heart received the rain. “The sadness, the cold, the dew come down from the sky in the mantle of the night,” seemed to fall upon her heart; she understood “the flower, full of vanity, and prodigal with its splendors in the sun, now, at the fall of day, withered and stained, repentant and disillusioned, trying to raise its poor petals toward heaven, begging a shade to hide it from the mockery of the sun, who had seen it in its pomp, and was laughing at the impotence of its pride; begging also a drop of dew to be let fall upon it.”

“No! Stop singing!” she cried in perfect Tagal. “Stop! These verses bore me!”

Sisa stopped. The orderly thought: “Ah, she knows the Tagal!” And he regarded his mistress with admiration.

She saw she had betrayed herself, became ashamed, and shame in her unfeminine nature meant rage. She showed the door to the imprudent orderly, and shut it behind him with a blow. Then she took several turns around the room, wringing the whip in her nervous hands. At last, planting herself before Sisa, she said to her in Spanish: “Dance!”

Sisa did not move.

“Dance! Dance!” she repeated in a threatening voice. The poor thing looked at her with vacant eyes. The vixen took hold of one of her arms and then the other, raising them and swaying them about. It was of no use. Sisa did not understand.

In vain DoÑa Consolacion began to leap about, making signs for Sisa to imitate her. In the distance a band was playing a slow and majestic march; but the creature leaped furiously to another measure, beating within herself. Sisa looked on, motionless. A faint curiosity rose in her eyes, a feeble smile moved her pale lips; the alfÉreza’s dance pleased her.

The dancer stopped, as if ashamed, and raised the terrible whip, well known to thieves and soldiers.

“Now,” said she, “it’s your turn! Dance!” And she began to give light taps to the bare feet of bewildered Sisa, whose face contracted with pain; the poor thing tried to ward off the blows with her hands.

“Ah! You’re beginning, are you?” cried DoÑa Consolacion, with savage joy, and from lento, she passed to allegro vivace.

Sisa cried out and drew up first one foot and then the other.

“Will you dance, accursed Indian!” and the whip whistled.

Sisa let herself fall to the floor, trying to cover her feet, and looking at her tormenter with haggard eyes. Two lashes on the shoulders forced her to rise with screams.

Her thin chemise was torn, the skin broken and the blood flowing.

This excited DoÑa Consolacion still more.

“Dance! Dance!” she howled, and seizing Sisa with one hand, while she beat her with the other, she commenced to leap about again.

At length Sisa understood, and followed, moving her arms without rhythm or measure. A smile of satisfaction came to the lips of the horrible woman—the smile of a female Mephistopheles who has found an apt pupil: hate, scorn, mockery, and cruelty were in it; a burst of demoniacal laughter could not have said more.

Absorbed by her delight in this spectacle, the alfÉreza did not know that her husband had arrived until the door was violently thrown open with a kick.

The alfÉrez was pale and morose. When he saw what was going on, he darted a terrible glance at his wife, then quietly put his hand on the shoulder of the strange dancer, and stopped her motion. Sisa, breathing hard, sat down on the floor. He called the orderly.

“Take this woman away,” he said; “see that she is properly cared for, and has a good dinner and a good bed. To-morrow she is to be taken to SeÑor Ibarra’s.”

Then he carefully closed the door after them, pushed the bolt, and approached his wife.