All had come about as Agueda had planned, with the exception that she herself was missing from plain, hill, and river. She had heard Beltran say: "Yes, I will take you down to the potrero, little girl, to gather the aguacates, but you must not approach the bushes, for the thorns would sting your tender hands." Agueda recalled the day when she had suggested this as one of the cautious pleasures open to the little thing for whom they two were looking; but she, Agueda, who was to have been the central figure, she, the one to whose forethought had been entrusted the planning and carrying out of these small amusements, was excluded. As the days passed by, Beltran and Agueda seldom met, except in the presence of others. She addressed him now in the third person, as "If the Don Beltran allow," or "If the Don Beltran wishes." When by chance the two stumbled upon one another, neither could get out of the way quickly enough.
It was on a day when she was forced to speak to him as to the disposition of some furniture, that her utter dejection and spiritless tone appealed to him. As he glanced at her, he noticed for the first time how large her eyes were, what hollows showed beneath them, how shrunken and thin was her cheek.
"What is it, Agueda? You treat me as a culprit."
"No, oh, no!" She shook her head sadly; then threw off the feeling apparently with a quick turn of the head. "The Señor is within his rights." Beltran's heart was touched. He drew near to her, and laid his arm about her shoulder, as he had not done now for a long time. She stooped her fine height, and drew her shoulder out from under his arm. She had no right now to feel that answering thrill; he was hers no longer. A sob, which she had tried to smother in her throat, struck him remorsefully.
"They will soon be gone, Agueda; then all will be as before."
"Nothing can ever be as before, Señor. I see it now, either for you or for me."
The wall within which she had encased herself, that dignity which silence under wrong gives to the oppressed, once broken, the flood of her words poured forth. The terrible sense of injustice overwhelmed and broke down her well-maintained reserve. She looked up at Beltran with reproach in her eyes, interrogation shining from their depths.
"Why could you not have told me, warned me, cautioned me? Ah, Nada! Nada knew." Her helplessness overcame her. Beltran had been her salvation, her teacher, her reliance. She felt wrecked, lost; she was drifting rudderless upon an ocean whose shores she could not discern. Where could she turn? Her only prop and stay withdrawn, what was there to count upon?
"I do not know the world, Beltran. My people never know the world. I have never known any world but this—but this." She stretched out her despairing arms to the grey square which she had called home. "Ah! Nada, dear Nada, you knew, you knew! I never dreamt that she meant you, Beltran, you!"
Hark! It was Felisa's voice calling to him. Soon she would be here. She would see them; she would suspect. Beltran shrugged his shoulders, he pursed out his lips. The Agueda whom he had known was ever smiling, ever ready to be bent to his will. This girl was complaining, reproachful; besides which, her looks were going. How could he ever have thought her even pretty? He contrasted her in a flash with the little white thing, all soft filmy lawn and laces, and turned away to rejoin that other sweeter creature who had never given him a discontented look.