The girl’s voice would almost have told that she was blind.  It was sweet and low, but it lacked life; though not weak, it was uncertain in strength and full of a longing that could never be satisfied, but that often seemed to come within possible reach of satisfaction.  There was in the tones, too, the perpetual doubt of one from whom anything might be hidden by silence, or by the least tarn of words.  Every passing hope and fear, and every pleasure and pain, were translated into sound by its quick changes.  It trusted but could not always quite promise to believe; it swelled and sank as the sensitive heart beat faster or slower.  It came from a world without light, in which only sound had meaning, and only touch was certainty.

“Yes,” answered Dolores.  “I have almost finished—­there is only half a page more to read over.”

“And why do you read it over?” asked Inez.  “Do you change what you have written?  Do you not think now exactly as you did when you wrote?”

“No; I feel a great deal more—­I want better words!  And then it all seems so little, and so badly written, and I want to say things that no one ever said before, many, many things.  He will laugh—­no, not that!  How could he?  But my letter will seem childish to him.  I know it will.  I wish I had never written it I Do you think I had better give it to him, after all?”

“How can I tell?” asked Inez hopelessly.  “You have never read it to me.  I do not know what you have said to him.”

“I have said that I love him as no man was ever loved before,” answered Dolores, and the true words seemed to thrill with a life of their own as she spoke them.

Then she was silent for a moment, and looked down at the written pages without seeing them.  Inez did not move, and seemed hardly to breathe.  Then Dolores spoke again, pressing both her hands upon the paper before her unconsciously.

“I have told him that I love him, and shall love him for ever and ever,” she said; “that I will live for him, die for him, suffer for him, serve him!  I have told him all that and much more.”

“More?  That is much already.  But he loves you, too.  There is nothing you can promise which he will not promise, and keep, too, I think.  But more!  What more can you have said than that?”

“There is nothing I would not say if I could find words!”

There was a fullness of life in her voice which, to the other’s uncertain tones, was as sunshine to moonlight.

“You will find words when you see him this evening,” said Inez slowly.  “And they will be better than anything you can write.  Am I to give him your letter?”

Dolores looked at her sister quickly, for there was a little constraint in the accent of the last phrase.

“I do not know,” she answered.  “How can I tell what may happen, or how I shall see him first?”

“You will see him from the window presently.  I can hear the guards forming already to meet him—­and you—­you will be able to see him from the window.”