The next evening she sat in the same position, her eyes fixed upon the shrinking features of the child.  The crone had gone.  She heard the door open, and turned with a scowl.  But it was La Tulita that entered and came rapidly to the head of the bed.  The girl’s eyes were swollen, her dress and hair disordered.

“I have come to you because you are in trouble,” she said.  “I, too, am in trouble.  Ay, my Faquita!”

The old woman put up her arms and drew the girl down to her lap.  She had never touched her idol before, but sorrow levels even social barriers.

“Pobrecita!” she said, and the girl cried softly on her shoulder.

“Will he come back, Faquita?”

“Surely, ninita.  No man could forget you.”

“But it is so far.”

“Think of what Don Vicente do for Dona Ysabel, mijita.”

“But he is an American.  Oh, no, it is not that I doubt him.  He loves me!  It is so far, like another world.  And the ocean is so big and cruel.”

“We ask the priest to say a mass.”

“Ah, my Faquita!  I will go to the church to-morrow morning.  How glad I am that I came to thee.”  She kissed the old woman warmly, and for the moment Faquita forgot her trouble.

But the child threw out its arms and moaned.  La Tulita pushed the hair out of her eyes and brought the medicine from the stove, where it simmered unsavourily.  The child swallowed it painfully, and Faquita shook her head in despair.  At the dawn it died.  As La Tulita laid her white fingers on the gaping eyelids, Faquita rose to her feet.  Her ugly old face was transfigured.  Even the grief had gone out of it.  For a moment she was no longer a woman, but one of the most subtle creations of the Catholic religion conjoined with racial superstitions.

“As the moon dieth and cometh to life again,” she repeated with a sort of chanting cadence, “so man, though he die, will live again.  Is it not better that she will wander forever through forests where crystal streams roll over golden sands, than grow into wickedness, and go out into the dark unrepenting, perhaps, to be bitten by serpents and scorched by lightning and plunged down cataracts?” She turned to La Tulita.  “Will you stay here, senorita, while I go to bid them make merry?”

The girl nodded, and the woman went out.  La Tulita watched the proud head and erect carriage for a moment, then bound up the fallen jaw of the little corpse, crossed its hands and placed weights on the eyelids.  She pushed the few pieces of furniture against the wall, striving to forget the one trouble that had come into her triumphant young life.  But there was little to do, and after a time she knelt by the window and looked up at the dark forest upon which long shafts of light were striking, routing the fog that crouched in the hollows.  The town was as quiet as a necropolis.  The white houses, under the black shadows of the hills, lay like tombs.  Suddenly the roar of the surf came to her ears, and she threw out her arms with a cry, dropping her head upon them and sobbing convulsively.  She heard the ponderous waves of the Pacific lashing the keel of a ship.