Lying along the thick branch, she listened smilingly.
“It is forbidden!”
“You will be punished!”
“The holy fathers—”
“What have they in their garden,” she cried at last, “that is so sacred that we may not see it? Would our feet soil the grass or the paths?”
The girls looked at one another slyly and hid their faces; and their malicious laughter, stifled with difficulty and uncontrollable, mingled again with the eager murmurs of the trees.
Fiora, herself laughing, she scarcely knew why, disappeared, the leaves closing behind her like a green sea. She crept along the great branch until her feet found something firm—the top of the wall. Clinging to the trunk of the tree which leaned against this wall, she tried to pierce the thick layers of foliage below her, but in vain; nothing was to be seen in the garden. She swore softly. Then, in trying to extend herself upon a branch which projected into the garden, she slipped, catching vainly at the nearest twigs, and with a thrill of alarm came to her feet upon the forbidden soil. She clenched her hands, full of bruised leaves, against her breast, as she crouched in the shelter of the drooping boughs. Startled by the noise of her fall, her companions took flight like a covey of birds, with a rustle, a faint murmur—silence.
Fiora sank to her knees and remained for some moments motionless, gazing out into the garden. In the dusk, deepened by the shadow of encircling trees, nothing was visible save narrow paths strewn with opal-colored sea-shells glimmering amid fresh turf, and roses blooming in masses along these walks and hiding the wall under their heavy leaves, thick with flowers like pale flames. Silence—except for the applauding whisper of the trees and the plash of water. There was no one in the garden.
Taking courage, the intruder pushed her way out from under the boughs of the fig-tree. The freshly sprinkled grass caressed her feet. The perfume of the roses and the magnolia blossoms, becoming more intense as the dew began to gather, surrounded her like an invisible presence, seeming to draw her on. She stole softly forward, her eyes alert for the least warning and alive with curiosity. The path led her through an arbor drifted deep with the perfumed snow of wistaria, and between banks of golden pansies set in mosaic borders. At the intersection of this gleaming streak with another a fountain played in a white basin, tossing high in the air a crystal ball. The crest of the plume of water caught a gleam of golden light, and the transparent ball glittered as it rose every instant from shadow. Fiora paused to watch it and to follow the arrowy glidings of the gold-fish in the basin. The short southern twilight was already ended. It was now dark—the hour at which the fathers took their evening meal. Yielding, therefore, to her fancy, she followed the windings of the paths, stopping recklessly to pluck now a scarlet pomegranate, which she ate with puckered lips; now a rose, crimson or yellow, or a long spray of white roses with pink hearts, set close together on the stem. Huge cacti, their gray, distorted bodies spotted with blood-colored blossoms, stood here and there in clumps. Banana trees waved softly their long, graceful fronds. The wind stirred with a dry rustle among palms with broad trunks and large fans, and others, slender and lofty, with crests like stacked swords, and among masses of pampas-grass tufted with great white plumes. Along the wall, to which now and then Fiora’s wanderings in the confined space brought her, grew apricot and peach trees heavy with ripe fruit. These perfect sweets also she tasted capriciously and threw away half-eaten. The place exerted a strange influence over her. The hour, the delicious thrill of danger, the heavy perfumes, intoxicated her. It seemed that the trees bent toward her to murmur something, that the pale faces of the flowers held some mysterious message. They looked friendly; they appeared to smile knowingly at her, to encourage her, to urge her on. Vaguely she felt all this breathing, eager life a part of her, belonging to her. She threw back her head, turning it from side to side with an air of satisfied possession, drawing in the cool air through her nostrils and parted lips with sensuous delight—this pale creature whose eyes showed a savage response to the cajoling beauty about her.
Convinced at last that the garden held no secret, save that of certain flowers and fruits cultivated to unknown perfection,—for she had explored it from the limiting wall to where the pallid outline of some building of the Mission gleamed through the trees,—she came back to the fountain and sat down on the wooden bench at the path’s edge, her flowers heaped in her lap. She gave herself a few moments more to watch the leaping ball, which now sparkled like silver in the midst of glittering spray. A shaft of moonlight, striking through the trees upon the jet of water, crept steadily downward. The girl, her eyes fixed on this trembling column of white fire and foam, fell in a vague, trance-like dream. The ripple of the fountain in her ears drowned the echo of slow footsteps advancing along the path.