The “child of light,” the embodied “joy and love and triumph” of the Placa, is called on to forego all outward and possible hope on behalf of that love which is for her the concentration of all light and joy and triumph.  Very touching are those heart-wrung pleadings by which she strives to avert the sacrifice; and we are oppressed almost as by the presence of the calm, loveless, hateless Fate of the old Greek tragedy, as Zarca’s inexorable logic puts them one by one aside, and leaves her as sole alternatives the offering up every hope, every present and possible joy of the love which is entwined with her life, or the turning away from that highest course to which he calls her.  As her own young hopes die out under the pressure of that deepest energy of her nature to which he appeals, it can hardly be but that all hope should grow dull and cold within—­hope even with regard to the issue of that mission to which she is called; and it is thus that she accepts the call:—­

   “Yes, say that we shall fail.  I will not count
   On aught but being faithful. . . . 
   I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. 
   The saints were cowards who stood by to see
   Christ crucified.  They should have thrown themselves
   Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain. 
   The grandest death, to die in vain, for love
   Greater than rules the courses of the world. 
   Such death shall be my bridegroom. . . . 
   Oh love! you were my crown.  No other crown
   Is aught but thorns on this poor woman’s brow.”

In this spirit she goes forth to meet her doom, faithfulness thenceforth the one aim and struggle of her life—­faithfulness to be maintained under the pressure of such anguish of blighted love and stricken hope as only natures so pure, tender, and deep can know—­faithfulness clung to with but the calmer steadfastness when the last glimmer of mere hope is gone.

The successive scenes in the Gypsy camp with Juan, with her father, and with the Gypsy girl Hinda, bring before us at once the intensity of her suffering and the depth of her steadfastness.  Trembling beneath the burden laid upon her,—­laid on her by no will of another, but by the earnestness of her own humanity,—­we see her seeking through Juan whatever of possible comfort can come through tidings of him she has left; in the strong and noble nature of her father, the consolation of at least hoping that her sacrifice shall not be all in vain; and in Hinda’s untutored, instinctive faithfulness to her name and race, support to her own resolve.  But no pressure of her suffering, no despondency as to the result of all, no thought of the lonely life before her, filled evermore with those yearnings toward the past and the vanished, can turn her back from her chosen path.