“The poor child fancies things that have no existence,” said Milagros anxiously. “It would be far better if you would all go and leave us to ourselves.”
“You are deceiving me, you are in league to deceive me!” cried María with sudden frenzy. And raising the Crucifix that lay upon her pillow, she said:
“Dare to tell a falsehood in the face of this.”
They all were silent except Gustavo, and he, extending an oratorical and legislative hand towards the sacred image, said, with grandiloquent emphasis:
“I abhor falsehood, and I believe that it can never under any circumstances be wrong or injurious to speak the truth.”
Milagros seized him as if to thrust him out of the room; but he went closer to his sister and, patting her cheeks, bent over her to say:
“But you are worrying yourself about trifles. Your saintliness and virtue have given you a position so exalted that you can afford to look down with contempt on a man who deserves nothing else from you. You are better already, and before long we will take you home, to our house, where you will be better cared for than ever, where we shall appreciate your worth and adore you as you deserve to be adored.... Rejoice instead of sorrowing, and give thanks for your recovered freedom. Poor martyr!”
Gustavo did not mean to be perverse, but he was possessed with a perfectly fanatical form of what is called public virtue.
“Poor martyr.” María repeated sadly, fixing her eyes on vacancy, on a remote spot where there was absolutely nothing to be seen, nothing but the vague projection of her own thought. After a short silence she said in a voice that became weaker as she spoke:
“I dreamed it. I dreamed the truth, and falsehood cheated me when I awoke.”