“Perhaps he will look for my light,” she thought, and drew her curtain quickly, and lighted a lamp. “I wonder if he will look!” Blushing, she passed slowly between the curtain and the light, then covered her face with her hands, ashamed of herself as if she had committed a sin. “I hope that he didn’t see me!” she whispered.
Soon after she extinguished her lamp, and sat down by the open window. At that hour of early evening San Salvador was as gay and crowded as it was silent and deserted in the morning. There was a sound of violins from the Star-house; and underneath her window two girls were dancing, trying to keep time to the music that was smothered by the sound of their steps. There was a murmur of talk from some of the near housetops, and the voice of a child singing itself to sleep. Leaning out the window, she could see a little farther up the road an open lighted booth where two men sat playing chess with a group of men and women watching the game. An old man wearing a scarlet fez sat close beside the players, intent on the game. The light on their faces made them look golden, and the fez was like a ruby.
“How beautiful it is! And how happy I am!” murmured Tacita.
CHAPTER XVII.
The next evening Dylar came for Tacita and her friend to go with him and hear a recitation of one of their story-tellers.
The place was a nook of the ravine leading to the kitchens, and was so completely shut in by high rocks as to be quite secluded.
An irregular circle capable of admitting fifty persons had a shoal alcove at one side, and all around it low benches on which were laid thick straw mats stuffed with moss. In the alcove was a chair; and an olive-oil lamp of four flames was set in a niche of the rock above. These flames threw a strong, rich light on a score or two of men and women in the circle, their faces shining out like medallions; but they touched the man who sat in the chair only in some fugitive line on his hair, or cheek, as he moved. His form was scarcely defined. He sat there, a shadow, with his face bowed into his hands, splashes of black and of gold all about him. He seemed to be waiting, and Dylar spoke.
“Here is one who waits to hear for the first time how Basil of the Dylar lived and died.”
At that voice the story-teller lifted his face, rose, and having bowed lowly, resumed his seat.
“How did Basil of the Dylar live and die!” he exclaimed. “Ask of the poor and the sorrowing how he lived. Ask of the men and women who stood at bay, facing a stupid and dastardly world. Ask, and they will answer you: ‘He was a dove and a lion,—a dove to our hidden sorrow, a lion in our defense.’ Ask of the heart bowed down with a sense of guilt so heavy it fain would hide in the night, and follow it round the world; fly from the light, and hide in the night forever around the world. They will say, ‘Has the Christ come back? Can a mercy so overflowing be found in a human soul?’ Ask of the children who clung to him when he stood white in the gloaming. He was white, his hair and heard; his face and his robe, they were white.