to see you; I was told that there would be a
ball-game at Erricalde and that you would come to play there; then I
said to myself that perhaps you would come here--and, while the festival
lasted, I looked often at the road through this window, to see if you
were coming--"

And she shows the window, open on the blackness of the savage
country--from which ascends an immense silence, with, from time to
time, the noise of spring, intermittent musical notes of crickets and
tree-toads.

Hearing her talk so quietly, Ramuntcho feels confounded by this
renunciation of all things; she appears to him still more irrevocably
changed, far-off--poor little nun!--Her name was Gracieuse; now her name
is Sister Mary Angelique, and she has no relatives; impersonal here, in
this little house with white walls, without terrestrial hope and without
desire, perhaps--one might as well say that she has departed for the
regions of the grand oblivion of death. And yet, she smiles, quite
serene now and apparently not even suffering.

Arrochkoa looks at Ramuntcho, questions him with a piercing eye
accustomed to fathom the black depths--and, tamed himself by all this
unexpected peace, he understands very well that his bold comrade dares
no longer, that all the projects have fallen, that all is useless
and inert in presence of the invisible wall with which his sister is
surrounded. At moments, pressed to end all in one way or in another, in
a haste to break this charm or to submit to it and to fly before it, he
pulls his watch, says that it is time to go, because of the friends who
are waiting for them.--The Sisters know well who these friends are
and why they are waiting but they are not affected by this: Basques
themselves, daughters and granddaughters of Basques, they have the blood
of smugglers in their veins and consider such things indulgently--

At last, for the first time, Gracieuse titters the name of Ramuntcho;
not daring, however, to address him directly, she asks her brother, with
a calm smile:

"Then he is with you, Ramuntcho, now? You work together?"

A silence follows, and Arrochkoa looks at Ramuntcho.

"No," says the latter, in a slow and sombre voice, "no--I, I go
to-morrow to America--"

Every word of this reply, harshly scanned, is like a sound of trouble
and of defiance in the midst of that strange serenity. She leans more
heavily on her brother's shoulder, the little nun, and Ramuntcho,
conscious of the profound blow whic