Looking to the couch, whither she had gone, he saw the figure of the paba stretched out like a corpse. He approached, and, searching the face, and laying his hand upon the breast over the heart, asked, in a low voice, “How long has your father been asleep?”
“A long time,” she replied.
“Jesu Christo! He is dead, and she does not know it!” he thought, amazed at her simplicity.
Again he regarded her closely, and for the first time was struck by her beauty of face and form, by the brightness of her eyes, by the hair, wavy on the head and curling over the shoulders, by the simple, childish dress, and sweet voice; above all, by the innocence and ineffable purity of her look and manner, all then discernible in the full glare of the lamps. And with what feeling he made discovery of her loveliness may be judged passably well by the softened tone in which he said, “Poor girl! your father will never, never wake.”
Her eyes opened wide.
“He is dead.”
She looked at him wistfully, and he, seeing that she did not understand, added, “He is in heaven; or, as he himself would have said, in the Sun.”
“Yes, but you will let him come back.”
He took note of the trustful, beseeching look with which she accompanied the words, and shook his head, and, returning to the fountain, took a seat upon a bench, reflecting.