One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, she
condescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no
life worthless which held the possibility of revenge.

She seemed to be speaking to herself. Her voice was low. He drank in
the gentle, as if dreamy sound, with a consciousness of peculiar
delight, of something warming his breast like a draught of generous
wine.

"True, senorita," he said, raising his face up to hers slowly: "there
is Estaban, who must be shown that I am not dead after all."

The mutterings of the mad father had ceased long before; the sighing
mother had withdrawn somewhere into one of the empty rooms. All was
still within as well as without, in the moonlight bright as day on the
wild orchard full of inky shadows. Gaspar Ruiz saw the dark eyes of
Dona Erminia look down at him.

"Ala! The sergeant," she muttered disdainfully.

"Why! He has wounded me with his sword," he protested, bewildered by
the contempt that seemed to shine livid on her pale face.

She crushed him with her glance. The power of her will to be
understood was so strong that it kindled in him the intelligence of
unexpressed things.

"What else did you expect me to do?" he cried, as if suddenly driven
to despair. "Have I the power to do more? Am I a general with an army