w that all were asleep. She crossed the room
and looked down upon Diego Estenega. His night garment, low about the
throat, made his head, with its sharply-cut profile, look like the
heads on old Roman medallions. The pallor of night, the extreme
refinement of his face, the deep repose, gave him an unmortal
appearance. Chonita bent over him fearfully. Was he dead? His
breathing was regular, but very quiet. She stood gazing down upon him,
the instinct of seeking vanished. What did it mean? Was this her soul!
A man? How could it be? Even in poetry she had never read of a man
being a woman's soul,--a man with all his frailties and sins, for the
most part unrepented. She felt, rather than knew, that Estenega had
trampled many laws, and that he cared too little for any law but his
own will to repent. And yet, there he lay, looking, in the gray light
and the impersonality of sleep, as sinless as if he had been created
within the hour. He looked not like a man but a spirit,--a soul; and
the soul was hers.

Again she asked herself, what did it mean? Was the soul but brain? She
and he were so alike in rudiments, yet he so immeasurably beyond her
in experience and knowledge and the stronger fiber of a man's mind--

He awoke suddenly and saw her. For a moment he stared incredulously,
then raised himself on his hand.

"Chonita!" he whispered.

But Chonita, with the long glide of the Californian woman, faded from
the room.

When she awoke the next morning she was assailed by a distressing
fear. Had she been to Estenega's room the night before? The memory was
too vivid, the details too practical, for a sleep-vagary. At breakfast
she hardly dared to raise her eyes. She felt that he was watching her;
but he often watched her. After breakfast they were alone at one end
of the corridor for a moment, and she compelled herself to raise her
eyes and look at him steadily. He was regarding her searchingly.

She was not a woman to endure uncertainty.

"Tell me," she cried, trembling from head to foot, the blood rushing
over her face, "did I go to your room last night?"

"Dona Chonita!" he exclaimed. "What an extraordinary question! You
have been dreaming."

XXIII.

We went to a bull-fight that day, danced that night, meriendaed and
danced again; a siesta in the afternoon, a few hours' sleep in the
night, refreshing us all. Chonita, alone, looked pale, but I knew that
her pallor was not due to weariness. And I knew that she