“We must part?” she sobbed. “But you are mad—cruel....” María’s love for her husband was as great as his for her—a gulf, an absolute divorce of their souls she could bear, but to live apart...!
“My mind is quite made up,” said Leon sadly.
“I agree—I consent to all you propose.”
Long after, when she had been sleeping for some hours, again Leon heard his wife wake with a cry of horror.
“I have been dreaming again—a horrible dream. I was dying and again I saw you—you were caressing and kissing another woman.—But it is daylight; the bells are really ringing now.”
The air was in fact full of the discordant jangle and clang of bells from the towers of the numberless stuccoed and whitewashed structures which, in Madrid, boast of the name of churches, and bear witness to the piety of the natives.
“They are ringing for Matins,” thought María, “I am dying of sleepiness—I must sleep. It is eight o’clock and still they ring, still they call me.—But I cannot go—I have given my word. Heavens! it is nine! Forgive me—spare me, beloved bells; I cannot go till Sunday.”