"Oh," cried Nacha, with a start. "I see what it is. I see! His sister!"
Julieta rushed to the girl's room to discover if this were true. She found Ana María lying on her bed, motionless, apparently asleep. While Julieta stood looking at her, she opened her eyes once or twice but apparently saw nothing. Julieta spoke to her, but received no reply. She knew this was all very strange, but stood hesitating, not knowing what to do, until Ana María grew restless and began to murmur unintelligibly. Then Julieta called Sara and Nacha. It occurred to them to give the sick girl some brandy; but she grew worse, and began to moan. Then she became delirious. They sent for the doctor. The whole house was curious, now, to see what was going on. Some of the boarders crowded into the room, others stood around the door asking questions. Doña Lucía, full of scruples, did not venture to come in.
When the doctor arrived, Ana María was dying. He was not long in discovering what had happened, for a morphine syringe lay on the floor, and on the table by the bed there was a bottle of the drug.
Julieta and Nacha searched through the dead girl's belongings for a clue to her name; and they soon came upon some old letters tied up in blue ribbon. Almost everyone began "Dear Eugenia" and ended "Your brother" or "Fernando." Among them were three photographs, one of an elderly man, one of a woman, and one of Fernando Monsalvat. Nacha took possession of this last. There could no longer be any doubt. The unfortunate morphine addict was Eugenia Monsalvat....
Nacha had never seen death at close hand before. Obsessed by the scene she had just witnessed, she imagined herself dying, forsaken by everyone she knew. The horrible pictures Monsalvat had painted of what lay in store for her rose threateningly in her memory; and she was so terrified by her imaginings that she could not bear to be alone for a single moment, nor could she bring herself to go to bed. Once when she tried to sleep fully dressed, she awoke suddenly, uttering a shriek which startled the entire household. In her dream she had been locked in a coffin....
Panchito's aunt, and Doña Lucía set the room in order, and performed the last services for poor Ana María. Sara, whose custom it was to go out to the streets every night after dinner, remained in the room, silent, and full of grotesque fears. As the women sat watching the dead girl one of them began to pray, and the girls joined in, shaken and weeping. The rough pine coffin, the two yellow tapers, the tearful prayers for the unhappy creature who had died in poverty, and far from any of her kin, the grief of these other girls, who wept as if repentent of all the tawdry weakness of their lives, formed a scene impressive even to the three or four men looking on. It seemed as though Ana María's long days of suffering, and short hours of joy, her caresses and her laughter, the goblets of champagne that those dead hands had raised to then living lips, and the soft silks that had once touched that cold body, were transformed into tears now, blinding the eyes of these girls, who wept for her past, for her death, for her suffering, but above all, for her despair.
At a certain moment, when the women began to pray, the two students, empty-headed and irreligious as they were, had the same impulse. They too wished to offer something to the dead; and at precisely the same moment, hastily, and each trying to hide the gesture from the other, they crossed themselves. At any other time this would have been the occasion of ridicule; but now each turned away with a smile that had in it more of pity than anything else; for even they felt that there was in that room something more than a tragic death; to cross ones-self in the presence of these even more tragic lives seemed indeed a small thing.
CHAPTER XIV
The doctor's words rang in Monsalvat's ear.