The girl stood swaying while he told how the night had betrayed them, how he had wrought5 incredible feats6 of valor7 before the shifting tide of battle had spewed him out the end of the sunken road and left him half dead in the grass. Asensio had lain there until, finding himself growing stronger, he had burrowed8 into a tangle9 of vines at the foot of a wall, where he had remained until the fighting ceased. When the Spaniards had finally discovered their mistake and had ceased riding one another down, when lights came and he heard Colonel Cobo cursing them like one insane, he had wriggled10 away, crossed the calzada, and hidden in the woods until dawn. He had been walking ever since; he had come home to die.
Rosa heard only parts of the story, for her mind was numbed11, her heart frozen. Her emotion was too deep for tears, it paralyzed her for the time being; she merely stood staring, her dark eyes glazed12, her ashen13 lips apart. Finally something snapped, and she knew nothing more until hours afterward14, when she found herself upon her comfortless bed with Evangelina bending over her. All night she had lain inert15, in a merciful stupor16; it was not until the next morning that she gradually came out of her coma17.
Then it was that the negress was really alarmed, fearing that if the girl did rally her mind would be affected18. But Rosa was young and, despite her fragility of form, she was strong—too strong, it seemed to her, and possessed19 of too deep a capacity for suffering. How she ever survived those next few days, days when she prayed hourly to die, was a mystery. And when she found that she could at last shed tears, what agony! The bond between her and Esteban had been stronger than usually exists between sister and brother; he had been her other self; in him she had centered her love, her pride, her ambition. The two had never quarreled; no angry word had ever passed between them: their mutual20 understanding, moreover, had been almost more than human, and where the one was concerned the other had been utterly21 unselfish. To lose Esteban, therefore, split the girl's soul and heart asunder22; she felt that she could not stand without him. Born into the world at the same hour, welded into unity23 by their mother's supreme24 pain, the boy and girl were of the same flesh and spirit; they were animated25 by the same life-current. Never had the one been ill but that the other had suffered corresponding symptoms; never had the one been sad or gay but that the other had felt a like reaction. Personalities26 so closely knit together are not uncommon27, and to sever28 them is often dangerous.
Into Rosa's life, however, there had come one interest which she could not share with her twin—that was her love for O'Reilly. Spanish-reared women, as a rule, do not play with love; when it comes they welcome it, even though it be that first infatuation so often scorned by older, colder people. So it was with Rosa Varona. Whatever might have been the true nature of her first feeling for the Irish-American, suffering and meditation29 had deepened and strengthened it into a mature and genuine passion. As the wise men of old found wisdom in cave or desert, so Rosa in her solitude30 had learned the truth about herself. Now, in the hour of her
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