Tacita blushed. “I was telling myself that it is a real plate of soup before you, and a real spoon in your hand; and that therefore I need not expect to find myself presently in the Madrid gallery, and see you disappear into a picture-frame.”
“Shall I tell you something of that man’s history by and by?” asked Dylar. “It may help to lay his ghost.”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “And, oh, yes!”
“When you shall have taken some repose, then,” he said, “come with me to the terrace of the tower. There, with the scene of my ancestor’s labors before our eyes, I will show you how to distinguish between him and me.”
“I cannot sleep, Elena,” said Tacita, when they were alone. “Yet a nap is just what I want. What a shame it is that our rebellious bodies do not know their duty better, and obey orders.”
“I fancy,” said Elena, “that the body could retort with very good reason when accused of being troublesome, and that it understands and does its business as well as the mind understands and does its own. Why should not body and soul be friendly comrades?”
“My respected friend and body,” said Tacita with great politeness, as she leaned back in a deep lounging-chair, “will you please to go to sleep?”
She closed her eyes, and was silent a little while, then opened them, and whispered, “Elena, it won’t!”
There was no reply. Elena had gone to sleep in the adjoining chamber.
Tacita sat looking out over the wide landscape. The nearest house visible over the olive-trees had a flame of nasturtium flowers on its lower walls, and a palm-tree lifting its columned trunk to hold a plumy green umbrella over the roof. The foliage waved languidly to and fro in a faint breeze, lifting and falling to meet its own shadow that lifted and fell responsive on the white walls and gray roof. There was something mesmeric in the motion; and the silence and “the strong sunshine settled to its sleep” were like a steadfast will behind the waving hands.