the groves, began to stir before me and to put on the lineaments of
life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struck upon the

hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook; the
earth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded up heady scents; the

woods smouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and
delight run through the earth. Something elemental, something

rude, violent, and savage, in the love that sang in my heart, was
like a key to nature's secrets; and the very stones that rattled

under my feet appeared alive and friendly. Olalla! Her touch had
quickened, and renewed, and strung me up to the old pitch of

concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling of the soul that men
learn to forget in their polite assemblies. Love burned in me like

rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I pitied, I
revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in

with dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God
upon the other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the

innocence and to the unbridled forces of the earth.
My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia,

and the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat
there, all sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong

sunshine, branded with a passiveenjoyment, a creature set quite
apart, before whom my ardour fell away like a thing ashamed. I

stopped a moment, and, commanding such shaken tones as I was able,
said a word or two. She looked at me with her unfathomable

kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the realm of
peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for the

first time, a sense of respect for one so uniformlyinnocent and
happy, and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself, that I should

be so much disquieted.
On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen

in the north room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand,
Olalla's hand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm,

and read, 'If you have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any
chivalry for a creature sorelywrought, go from here to-day; in

pity, in honour, for the sake of Him who died, I supplicate that
you shall go.' I looked at this awhile in mere stupidity, then I

began to awaken to a weariness and horror of life; the sunshine
darkened outside on the bare hills, and I began to shake like a man

in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened in my life unmanned me
like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was not my

happiness, it was life itself that was involved. I could not lose
her. I said so, and stood repeating it. And then, like one in a

dream, I moved to the window, put forth my hand to open the
casement, and thrust it through the pane. The blood spurted from

my wrist; and with an instantaneous quietude and command of myself,
I pressed my thumb on the little leaping fountain, and reflected

what to do. In that empty room there was nothing to my purpose; I
felt, besides, that I required assistance. There shot into my mind

a hope that Olalla herself might be my helper, and I turned and
went down stairs, still keeping my thumb upon the wound.

There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed
myself to the recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back

and sat dozing close before the fire, for no degree of heat
appeared too much for her.

'Pardon me,' said I, 'if I disturb you, but I must apply to you for
help.'

She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very
words I thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the

nostrils and seemed to come suddenly and fully alive.
'I have cut myself,' I said, 'and rather badly. See!' And I held

out my two hands from which the blood was oozing and dripping.
Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil

seemed to fall from her face, and leave it sharplyexpressive and
yet inscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her

disturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me
by the hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she

had bitten me to the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden
spurting of blood, and the monstroushorror of the act, flashed

through me all in one, and I beat her back; and she sprang at me
again and again, with bestial cries, cries that I recognised, such

cries as had awakened me on the night of the high wind. Her
strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly ebbing with the

loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the abhorrent
strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against the

wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound,
pinned down his mother on the floor.

A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I
was incapable of movement. I heard the struggle roll to and fro

upon the floor, the yells of that catamount ringing up to Heaven as
she strove to reach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her

hair falling on my face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and
half drag, half carry me upstairs into my own room, where she cast

me down upon the bed. Then I saw her hasten to the door and lock
it, and stand an instant listening to the savage cries that shook

the residencia. And then, swift and light as a thought, she was
again beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in her bosom,

moaning and mourning over it with dove-like sounds. They were not
words that came to her, they were sounds more beautiful than

speech, infinitelytouching, infinitely tender; and yet as I lay
there, a thought stung to my heart, a thought wounded me like a

sword, a thought, like a worm in a flower, profaned the holiness of
my love. Yes, they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired

by human tenderness; but was their beauty human?
All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that nameless

female thing, as she struggled with her half-witted whelp,
resounded through the house, and pierced me with despairing sorrow

and disgust. They were the death-cry of my love; my love was
murdered; was not only dead, but an offence to me; and yet, think

as I pleased, feel as I must, it still swelled within me like a
storm of sweetness, and my heart melted at her looks and touch.

This horror that had sprung out, this doubt upon Olalla, this
savage and bestial strain that ran not only through the whole

behaviour of her family, but found a place in the very foundations
and story of our love - though it appalled, though it shocked and

sickened me, was yet not of power to break the knot of my
infatuation.

When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at the door, by
which I knew Felipe was without; and Olalla went and spoke to him -

I know not what. With that exception, she stayed close beside me,
now kneeling by my bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her

eyes upon mine. So then, for these six hours I drank in her
beauty, and silently perused the story in her face. I saw the

golden coin hover on her breaths; I saw her eyes darken and
brighter, and still speak no language but that of an unfathomable

kindness; I saw the faultless face, and, through the robe, the
lines of the faultless body. Night came at last, and in the

growing darkness of the chamber, the sight of her slowly melted;
but even then the touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and

talked with me. To lie thus in deadlyweakness and drink in the
traits of the beloved, is to reawake to love from whatever shock of

disillusion. I reasoned with myself; and I shut my eyes on
horrors, and again I was very bold to accept the worst. What

mattered it, if that imperioussentiment survived; if her eyes
still beckoned and attached me; if now, even as before, every fibre

of my dull body yearned and turned to her? Late on in the night
some strength revived in me, and I spoke:-

'Olalla,' I said, 'nothing matters; I ask nothing; I am content; I
love you.'

She knelt down awhile and prayed, and I devoutly respected her
devotions. The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of

the three windows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which
I saw her indistinctly. When she rearose she made the sign of the

cross.