“Wouldn’t it be better for you to go to sleep?”
“Sleep! If you knew the horrible dreams I have had! No, I would rather stay awake now. Sit down here.”
“Where?”
“Here on the floor beside me. Otherwise we cannot speak in a whisper—and we might waken mamma.”
Esclavita acceded to the proposal without demur, and stretched herself on the floor, almost cheek to cheek with Rogelio, but without losing her modest and reserved air, showing in this that she was born in the land, where bucolic naturalness of action is united to modesty of demeanor. The girl’s pure virginal breath mingled for the second time with that of the student, but the feelings it awakened in him now were of a very different nature from those he had experienced on the former occasion. Whether it was that the shock caused by his mother’s fall had transformed his youthful sensations into sentiment, or that the place in which he was did not admit of evil thoughts, certain it is that near to him as Esclavita was, and easy as it would have been to take liberties with her, it did not even enter into his mind to attempt doing so; all he was conscious of was a sort of affectionate effusiveness, unusual with him, a feeling of inexplicable tenderness, which caused his eyes to fill with tears. Reaching out his hand, he grasped Esclavita’s and, pressing it with force, said:
“Esclavita, mamma came near being killed to-day.”
“Thank God it was nothing serious, Señorito!” answered the girl, returning the pressure.
“And if she had been killed, what should I have done, tell me that?”
Esclavita did not answer, thereby showing her wisdom, for the question put to her was one of those which do not admit of being answered in words. She pressed more forcibly than before the student’s hot, trembling hand in hers, and her eyes responded in the half shadow with a long and eloquent glance.
“If she had died,” continued Rogelio, yielding to his involuntary emotion, “you see that I should have no one in the world but you, no one.”