Chichi’s presence interrupted the despairing thoughts of her parents.  She had run to the automobile, and was returning with an armful of flowers.  She hung a wreath on the cross and placed a great spray of blossoms at the foot.  Then she scattered a shower of petals over the entire surface of the grave, sadly, intensely, as though performing a religious rite, accompanying the offering with her outspoken thoughts—­“For you who so loved life for its beauties and pleasures! . . . for you who knew so well how to make yourself beloved!” . . .  And as her tears fell, her affectionate memories were as full of admiration as of grief.  Had she not been his sister, she would have liked to have been his beloved.

And having exhausted the rain of flower-petals, she wandered away so as not to disturb the lamentations of her parents.

Before the uselessness of his bitter plaints, Don Marcelo’s former dominant character had come to life, raging against destiny.

He looked at the horizon where so often he had imagined the adversary to be, and clenched his fists in a paroxysm of fury.  His disordered mind believed that it saw the Beast, the Nemesis of humanity.  And how much longer would the evil be allowed to go unpunished? . . .

There was no justice; the world was ruled by blind chance;—­all lies, mere words of consolation in order that mankind might exist unterrified by the hopeless abandon in which it lived!

It appeared to him that from afar was echoing the gallop of the four Apocalyptic horsemen, riding rough-shod over all his fellow-creatures.  He saw the strong and brutal giant with the sword of War, the archer with his repulsive smile, shooting his pestilential arrows, the bald-headed miser with the scales of Famine, the hard-riding spectre with the scythe of Death.  He recognized them as only divinities, familiar and terrible-which had made their presence felt by mankind.  All the rest was a dream.  The four horsemen were the reality. . . .

Suddenly, by the mysterious process of telepathy, he seemed to read the thoughts of the one grieving at his feet.

The mother, impelled by her own sorrow, was thinking of that of others.  She, too, was looking toward the distant horizon.  There she seemed to see a procession of the enemy, grieving in the same way as were her family.  She saw Elena with her daughters going in and out among the burial grounds, seeking a loved one, falling on their knees before a cross.  Ay, this mournful satisfaction, she could never know completely!  It would be forever impossible for her to pass to the opposite side in search of the other grave, for, even after some time had passed by, she could never find it.  The beloved body of Otto would have disappeared forever in one of the nameless pits which they had just passed.

“O Lord, why did we ever come to these lands?  Why did we not continue living in the land where we were born?” . . .