[CHAPTER XIX.]
NELA IS TAMED.
They walked on a short distance without speaking. Teodoro Golfin, for all his learning, wisdom, and eloquence, felt as ignorant and as helpless as Nela, and less disposed for speech than usual. She followed him unresistingly, and he accommodated his steps to those of the child-woman, like a man taking a boy to school. At a turn in the road where three enormous white stones stood up, weather-worn till they looked like bleached skeletons, the doctor sat down, and placing Nela in front of him, as if she were on her trial for some grave delinquency, he held her by both hands and said solemnly:
"What were you going to do there?"
"I—where?"
"Down there. You know very well what I mean. Answer me plainly, as you would answer your confessor or your father."
"I have no father," replied Nela with a faintly mutinous accent.
"That is true—but suppose me to be your father, and answer me. What were you going to do?"
"My mother is down there," she answered dully.
"Your mother is dead. Do you not know that dead people are gone to another world, or altogether away?"