Florencia looked at the door vaguely,—she was thinking perhaps she had better go.
“Yes, yes,” continued Chinita, as if to herself, “I am growing perhaps like the owl,—I, who in the broad sunlight saw nothing, have discovered many things here in the dark. Well, well, Florencia, one thought came to me on a vexed night when I could not sleep. I had been talking to Doña Feliz that day. I know not why, but I am with Doña Feliz like the young fox my god-father tamed,—when I touched him with my hand he was pleased, yet he bristled and longed to bite. Good! we had talked that day. Yes,—it was of the nuns, and she said the Señora might desire I should be one; and I was angry, and said I would not be shut up to pray as the Señorita Herlinda had been; and then Doña Feliz bade me be silent and ponder what she had said. And after she went away it was not of myself I thought, but of the Señorita Herlinda; and in the midst of my thoughts I saw the American pass the court, and Doña Isabel, who was near, turned herself away, as if an adder had darted upon her.”
Florencia looked up with a mute inquiry or fascination in her gaze. Chinita, in a sort of monotone, followed the thread of her thoughts.
“When I went to sleep at last, I dreamed that I, though still Chinita, was Herlinda, and that the American who was lying wounded in the room below came up the stairs, and tapped lightly at my window. I stepped softly and looked out at him through the grating. Ah, it was this Don ’Guardo, yet so different, as a man is different from his reflection in a glass; and I did not wonder to see him there. I put my hand out and touched him, and was happy. And as I stood at the bars,—I myself, and yet the niña Herlinda,—the man of my dream said, as a husband says to his wife, ‘Open, my life;’ and when I opened the door he led in by the hand a little child,—I knew it to be his child, though it had not blue eyes nor the yellow hair. Well, I stood there, and stood there, and strove to speak and could not; and the vision of the man and of the child faded, and the thought that I was still Herlinda faded too, and the dream was ended.”
She ceased speaking, and looked at Florencia with a vague yet searching gaze.
“By my faith, a strange dream!” murmured Florencia, disquieted. “You should have lighted a blessed candle when you woke, and passed it before you three times, saying an Ave each time. Santa Inez! I would rather see the ghost of the American than dream such a dream!”
“Coward! it frightened me not,” continued the girl. “And I did not seem to wake, though I knew that I, Chinita, lay in the bed, and that my head sank deep in the soft pillow, and that I could not or would not raise it; and the meaning of the dream crept into my mind, as the light creeps into a dark room. Yes, I felt as I used to when I saw the little green blades shoot up in the spring, and I could think how the corn would grow, and the leaves would wave, and the maize would lie in the silk and the yellow sheath; and so I had thought of what I had heard,—of the love of Herlinda for the American, and what might have come of it.”
“Hush!” interrupted Florencia with a scared look. “You said you dreamed of a child. Did you see its face?”
“No,” answered Chinita, slowly. “But what need that I should see it?”
The two had risen as if by one impulse, and looked into each other’s eyes. The woman was awed as much by the penetration and daring of the young girl’s mind as by the thought that for the first time arose within her.