María saw all this in an anguish of terror: She was there, and she was not; she could not shriek, she could not even breathe. But at length there came a moment when terror gave way to grief. Among the crowd of damned—guilty of unpardonable sin—was one who seemed to be especially heinous, judging from the crowd of demons, male and female, who surrounded him. This was Leon. María saw him seized, clutched by the horrible greasy hands, cast into the boiling cauldron, dragged out with a skimmer, pushed back with a spoon. Finally they picked him up on a pitchfork and carried him to the mouth of a furnace so fiery that any earthly fire would seem as ice by comparison. Then it was that María uttered a cry, threw up her arm and hand—her arm that seemed of enormous length, her hand that smarted with the burning heat:
“No, no, never—he is mine!”
The dream was broken, it vanished like the page of a book that is suddenly closed—but the impression remained.
CHAPTER VII.
WILL SHE DIE.
María awoke to find herself in a large, bare room. Her husband stood in front of her, alive and tangible. She did not recognize the place, but she felt that she was in safe hands.
“Whose house is this?” she asked.
“Mine.... Be calm. I am here.—Do you not see me?”
María’s eyes wandered round the walls, and up to the ceiling.