Leon stood looking at him but he did not touch him; silent, gloomy, and oppressed by his recent nightmare, he dared not trust his own feelings.
“No,” he said to himself, “it is nothing more than an antipathy which will fade into pity—for the poor wretch is dying.”
Luis took his sister’s hands and addressed her in his weak, quavering, broken voice, half-solemn but excited by the force of the fever that was consuming him:
“The worst danger that awaits you is that you will be asked to yield to compromises, to arrange matters. Guard yourself against this snare of the devil. It is a snare, though it is hidden under roses, my child. Between faith and unfaith no compromise is possible. Nay, can you conceive of any between everlasting life and death? There is no common measure for the temporal and the eternal. Make no concessions, do not yield an inch of the firm and lofty ground you now stand upon. You cannot be religious by halves; if you are not wholly religious you are not religious at all. Our Lord requires that the work, to be perfect, shall be so intimately complete that the abstraction of a single jot nullifies the whole. Beware, I say, beware of the snare!... Compromise is the note of the times we live in, and it has sent more souls to hell than the crassest infidelity.... But you ... remember me, think of me. Do not forget that I came here to save you, to call you into the true path, and to die in your arms that my presence should be more real to you. God sent us into the world together and he bids us meet again at the foot of his throne of glory.... María! María...!”
“Be calm; pray, pray be calm,” said María in desperate alarm.
Luis opened his eyes and looking up at Leon exclaimed in bewildered accents: “there is some one there! María, who is that man?”
“It is Leon—my husband.... Send for the doctor, do not you think that we ought, Leon? Call the servants—where are they all...?”
María started up and was going to call some one, but her brother clung to her arm.
“Do not leave me alone,” he said. “Your husband, did you say; oh, God, what is this doubt that torments me? Is it a foolish scruple, like so many others I have suffered from, or is it a true warning of conscience? Tell me, who is it...? Leon did you say?” But neither of them replied and he went on: “I have offended him? What an idea. I only gave my sister such advice as my faith required of me. It was God that spoke through me ... God himself.... It is a mere scruple—and yet even a scruple must be listened to.... Ah! here is my good Paoletti!” But his eyes were still fixed on Leon.
“Padre Paoletti, tell me, have I offended him?” Then after a pause, as though he had heard an answer he added: “no, no, very true. I cannot have offended him, and if I have, to-morrow—on my death-bed, I will ask his forgiveness. Then, too, I will warn her—María ... once more....”