She arose, trembling, and opened her door. Santa Barbara was as
quiet as all the world is in the chill last hours of night. She
half expected to see something hover before her, a will-o'-the-wisp,
alluring her over the rocky valleys and towering mountains until death
gave her weary feet rest. She remembered vaguely that she had read
legends of that purport.

But there was nothing,--not even the glow of a late cigarito or the
flash of a falling star. Still she seemed to know where the soul
awaited her. She closed her door softly and walked swiftly down the
corridor, her bare feet making no sound on the boards. At a door on
the opposite side she paused, shaking violently, but unable to pass
it. She opened the door and went in. The room, like all the others in
that time of festivity, had more occupants than was its wont; a bed
was in each corner. The shutters and windows were open, the moonlight
streamed in, and she saw that all were asleep. She crossed the room
and looked down upon Diego Estenega. His night garment, low about the
throat, made his head, with its sharply-cut profile, look like the
heads on old Roman medallions. The pallor of night, the extreme
refinement of his face, the deep repose, gave him an unmortal
appearance. Chonita bent over him fearfully. Was he dead? His
breathing was regular, but very quiet. She stood gazing down upon him,
the instinct of seeking vanished. What did it mean? Was this her soul!
A man? How could it be? Even in poetry she had never read of a man
being a woman's soul,--a man with all his frailties and sins, for the
most part unrepented. She felt, rather than knew, that Estenega had
trampled many laws, and that he cared too little for any law but his
own will to repent. And yet, there he lay, looking, in the gray light
and the impersonality of sleep, as sinless as if he had been created