He led her through the door, under the colonnade, out into the court.
“Look up, Tecetl, look up! See the sky, drink the air. You are free!”
She uncovered her eyes; they filled as with fiery arrows. She screamed, staggered as if struck, and cried, “Where are you? I am lost, I am blind!”
“O Madre de Dios!” said Orteguilla, comprehending the calamity, and all its inconveniences to her and himself. “Help me, most miserable of wretches,—help me to a little wisdom!”
To save her from falling, he had put his arm around her; and as they stood thus,—she the picture of suffering, and he overwhelmed by perplexity,—help from any quarter would have been welcome; had the slave been near, he might have abandoned her; but aid there was not. So he led her tenderly to the steps, and seated her.
“How stupid,” he said in Spanish,—“how stupid not to think of this! If, the moment I was born, they had carried me out to take a look at the sun, shining as he is here, I would have been blinder than any beggar on the Prado, blinder than the Bernardo of whom I have heard Don Pedro tell. My nurse was a sensible woman.”
Debating what to do, he looked at Tecetl; and for the first time since she had come out of the door, he noticed her dress,—simply a cotton chemise, a skirt of the same reaching below the knees, a blue sash around the waist,—very simple, but very clean. He noticed, also, the exceeding delicacy of her person, the transparency of her complexion, the profusion of her hair, which was brown in the sun. Finally, he observed the rosary.
“She is not clad according to the laws which govern high-born ladies over the water; yet she is beautiful, and—by the Mother! she is a Christian. Enough. By God’s love, I, who taught her to pray, will save her, though I die. Help me, all the saints!”
He adjusted the hood once more, and, stooping, said, in his kindliest tone, “Pshaw, Tecetl, you are not blind. The light of the sun is so much stronger than that of your lamps that your eyes could not bear it. Cheer up, cheer up! And now put your arm around my neck. I will carry you to the top of these steps. We cannot stay here.”
She stretched out her arms.