I saw that my persuasions were in vain, and left her alone with her dead.
As I passed through the living-room to reach my own, I was startled by a white-robed figure in front of the Virgin's picture.
The full July moon, streaming through the open door, discovered touchingly the hopeless misery of Mariposilla. She was in her nightgown, gazing piteously into the illuminated face of the unsympathetic doll above the chimney shelf.
As I approached her, she turned sadly from the picture.
In the moonlight, I saw great tears shining in her eyes.
"She loves me not; she is angry and smiles no more," she said, despairingly.
The child's lovely face expressed so perfectly the agony of desertion that I felt powerless to comfort her. Her firm belief in the Virgin's displeasure had torn from her heart its last hope. For weeks she believed that the little mother would have mercy, would intercede for her, and restore in some miraculous way her lover; but to-night the Virgin would not smile. She refused to pity her sorrowful child.
"Dear Mariposilla," I said, remembering the tactics that I sometimes employed with Marjorie; "you must not think because the Virgin refuses to smile that she is angry.
"We ourselves cannot smile. We are sad and awed by the presence of death, and surely it would be heartless for 'our Lady' to smile, when those who love and trust her are in trouble.
"You are nervous and weary. You shall room with me to-night. I have already prepared you a nice bed upon my couch."