On the last evening she went to the assembly, passed through all the rooms, saying a few words, but none of farewell. Then she went to the Basilica.
The rapture of her vigil had subsided; but the seal of it remained stamped on her soul, never again to be overwhelmed in darkness. Doubt and fear were gone forever, and she went on cheerful and assured, if not always sensibly joyous.
It had seemed to her that on this last visit she should have a good deal to say; but no words came. What she was doing and to do spoke for her. She walked about, looking at the temple from different points, to impress its features on her memory, and sat an hour before the throne in quiet contemplation.
What her leave-taking was of that sacred place, we say not.
Early the next morning she was seen walking along the mountain path with Ion at her side. At the last visible point of the path she turned, stretched her arms out toward the town, then went her way.
Ion came back an hour later, his eyes swollen with weeping. “I shall see her in the spring, in the spring, in the spring,” he kept repeating, to comfort himself. And when Tacita came to meet him with both her hands held out, “O Lady Tacita, I shall go out to her in the spring, in the spring!” he said.
CHAPTER XXII.
The short southern winter drew to a close. Everything that could fade had faded. The vines stretched a network of dry twigs, the olive trees were ashen, the pines were black. The gray of crags and houses looked bleak under the white dazzle of the mountain-wreath, and the dazzling blue of the sky. Sometimes both were swathed in heavy clouds, and the town was almost set afloat in floods of rain.
It was the time for in-door work, and closer domestic life.
The last days of this season were given up to penitential exercises similar in intention to the Holy Week of the Catholic church, though different in form,—having, in fact, only form enough, and that of the simplest, to suggest the spirit. Like all the instruction given in San Salvador, its object was less to act upon the passive soul than to set the soul itself in action.