"Yes, father," I answered him in a low voice.
A quarter of an hour later Paula returned. Never shall I forget the anguish and terror that I experienced when Teresa, warning us to be quiet, led the way to the bedside of my dying sister.
Catalina did not appear to notice our entrance. Her eyes were closed, and her face so pale that I believed her already dead, but my father made signs to us to draw a little nearer and putting his hand over the forehead of my poor sister, he called to her gently, in a voice that betrayed great anguish.
"Catalina, Lisita and Paula have come to visit you. Would you not like to embrace them?"
"Lisita … Paula …" I heard Catalina murmur in a far-away voice. "Ah, yes, I remember. Help me up, father." My father lifted the poor thin body of his daughter. In spite of all I could do, I could not keep from crying, thinking that it would be the last time that I would embrace my big sister, whom I had loved so little. She looked at us for a long while, and then said calmly, "Have you two come to say good-bye to me?"
"No, no," said my father; "we hope that …"
"No, father, I'm dying. I know that well. It is useless to keep it from me. Think of it, only eighteen years old, and yet I've been of no use to anybody, and nobody's going to miss me very much."
"Catalina," exclaimed my father, "do not speak so. You hurt me talking that way, and you make Lisita and Paula cry."
"Are you really crying, Lisita?" And Catalina turned her feverish eyes toward me. "How strange! I have not been a very good sister to you, and I always thought you didn't care for me."
"Oh, Catalina," I exclaimed, kneeling beside the bed, "please don't die. I do love you so. I promise to come and care for you every day and I'll never make another noise while you are sick. I will be always good to you, indeed—even when you're bad-humored. Please don't die." And then I sobbed with such violence that my father, fearing that such conduct would cut even shorter that parting life upon the bed, asked Teresa to take me away.