XIII

One afternoon, as I came down from the mountain, I observed signs of excitement on the faces of the servants whom I met in the corridors. My sister told me that María had suffered a nervous shock, and was still unconscious. She then tried to dispel my loving anxiety.

Forgetting everything, I went straight to the room where María was, and could scarcely control the mad impulse to press her to my heart and restore her to full life. My father was seated at the foot of her bed. He fixed upon me one of his intense looks, and then, turning towards María, seemed to be accusing me as he pointed to her. My mother was there: but she did not look at me. She knew of my love, and like a good mother, knew how to pity me.

I stood motionless, gazing at María, without daring to ask the cause of her sickness. Her face, half hidden by her disheveled hair, wore a deadly pallor. In her hair were the flowers I had given her in the morning, now all crushed. Her contracted forehead spoke of unbearable pain, and a slight moisture was on her temples. Her eyes were closed; but tears had tried to force their way out, and lay glistening under her lashes.

My father understood my anguish. He rose to go out, but before opening the door he went to the bed and felt of María’s pulse.

“She’s getting better,” he said. “Poor child! It’s the same disease her mother had.”

Her breathing was growing less convulsive. I stood at the head of the bed, and as soon as my father was gone, unmindful of Emma and my mother, I took the hand which lay upon the pillow and bathed it in the tears I could no longer keep back. I understood the full force of the calamity; it was the same disease her mother had. Her mother had died very young of an incurable form of epilepsy. This was the thought that was mastering and almost destroying me.

I perceived a slight movement in the cold and heavy hand. María was breathing more freely, and trying to say something. Her head moved back and forth as if trying to free itself from a crushing weight. Finally she murmured some meaningless words; at last I thought I could distinguish my name. I leaned over her, devouring her with my gaze. Perhaps I pressed her hand too hard, perhaps I called her. She slowly opened her eyes, as if an intense light were hurting them, and fixed them on me, trying to recognize me. Half conscious only, she said, “What is it?”

Seeing my mother, she added, “What has happened to me?”

We tried to quiet her; but she said, in a reproachful tone, which I could not then understand, “Now you see. I was afraid of it.”

She remained profoundly sad. But when I came back to see her at night, she said, on taking leave of me, “Goodbye till tomorrow,” and emphasized the last word, as she was accustomed to whenever any conversation of ours was broken off in the evening.