Then she drew back into the darkness.  The door was wide open now, and Eudaldo was already shuffling towards the entrance.  Dolores went forward, bending her head, and trying to affect her sister’s step.  No distance had ever seemed so long to her as that which separated her from the hall door which Eudaldo was already opening for her.  But she dared not hasten her step, for though Inez moved with perfect certainty in the house, she always walked with a certain deliberate caution, and often stopped to listen, while crossing a room.  The blind girl was listening now, with all her marvellous hearing, to be sure that all went well till Dolores should be outside.  She knew exactly how many steps there were from where she stood to the entrance, for she had often counted them.

Dolores must have been not more than three yards from the door, when Inez started involuntarily, for she heard a sound from without, far off—­so far that Dolores could not possibly have heard it yet, but unmistakable to the blind girl’s keener ear.  She listened intently—­there were Dolores’ last four steps to the open doorway, and there were others from beyond, still very far away in the vaulted corridors, but coming nearer.  To call her sister back would have made all further attempt at escape hopeless—­to let her go on seemed almost equally fatal—­Inez could have shrieked aloud.  But Dolores had already gone out, and a moment later the heavy door swung back to its place, and it was too late to call her.  Like an immaterial spirit, Inez slipped away from the place where she stood and went back to Dolores’ room, knowing that Eudaldo would very probably go and knock where he supposed her sister to be a prisoner, before slipping the outer bolt again.  And so he did, muttering an imprecation upon the little lamp that had gone out and left the small hall in darkness.  Then he knocked, and spoke through the door, offering to bring her food, or fire, and repeating his words many times, in a supplicating tone, for he was devoted to both the sisters, though terror of old Mendoza was the dominating element in his existence.

At last he shook his head and turned despondently to light the little lamp again; and when he had done that, he went away and bolted the door after him, convinced that Inez had gone out and that Dolores had stayed behind in the last room.

When she had heard him go away the last time, the blind girl threw herself upon Dolores’ bed, and buried her face in the down cushion, sobbing bitterly in her utter loneliness; weeping, too, for something she did not understand, but which she felt the more painfully because she could not understand it, something that was at once like a burning fire and an unspeakable emptiness craving to be filled, something that longed and feared, and feared longing, something that was a strong bodily pain but which she somehow knew might have been the source of all earthly delight,—­an element detached from thought and yet holding it,