Don Manuel de Lara: No.
Sister Pilar: I ... I am all dumbfounded ... I ...
Don Manuel de Lara: I will make it clear. On Tuesday night I heard your talk with Sister Assumcion.
Sister Pilar (in horror): Oh!...
Don Manuel de Lara: I was the man behind the wall whom you justly named the worst kind of would-be adulterer, and....
Sister Pilar: I have no further words for Sister Assumcion’s lover.
Don Manuel de Lara: I am not Sister Assumcion’s lover. The moon has already set and risen, the sun risen and set on his dead body.
Sister Pilar (haughtily): I am not an old peasant woman that you should seek to please me with riddles.
Don Manuel de Lara: I will read you the riddle. Some weeks ago I had business—sent from the Alcazar on a matter pertaining to some herbs—with that old hag Trotaconventos. And through what motive I cannot say, she waxed exceeding eloquent on the charms of Sister Assumcion. We are taught in the Catechism that the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, are gates by which either fiends or angels may enter.... Well, her words entered my ears and set fire to a great, dry heap of old dreams, old memories, old hopes ... (strange! these are the trovar’s words!) piled high on my heart. I became a flame.... You are of the South, you have never seen a fire consuming a sun-parched vega in the North. Well, a fire must work its will, and, devouring all that blocks its path—flowers, towers, men—drive forward to its secret bourne. Who knows the bourne of fire? I obtained speech with Sister Assumcion; it takes many waters to quench a great fire, but the wind can alter its course. I heard a voice and strange, passionate words ... the course of the fire was altered, but still it drives on, still it consumes.
Sister Pilar (in a small, cold voice): Well?