“Aunt,” she murmured.
“What is the matter with you?” asked the latter, frightened, as she saw the young woman’s face.
“Take me to my room!” she begged, clinging to the arm of the old woman in order to raise herself to her feet.
“Are you sick, my child? You seem to have lost all your strength. What is the matter with you?”
“A little sick to my stomach ... the crowd in the sala ... so much light ... I need to rest. Tell father that I am going to sleep.”
“You are cold! Do you want some tea?”
Maria Clara shook her head negatively. She closed the door of her room and locked it, and, her strength failing her, she fell to the floor, at the feet of an image, weeping and sobbing:
“Mother, mother, my mother!”
The moonlight was shining through the open window and door which led out upon the azotea.
The orchestra continued playing gay waltzes. The laughter and the hum of conversation could be heard in her bedroom. A number of times her family, Aunt Isabel, Doña Victorina, and even Linares, knocked at her door, but Maria Clara did not move. There was a rattle in her throat.