Luna made an effort to release herself, trembling for herself, uncertain of her will power.
"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
This time she really departed, and he allowed her to leave, lacking the strength with which to follow her.
Aguirre passed a sleepless night, seated at the edge of his bed, gazing with stupid fixity at the designs upon the wall-paper. To think that this could have happened! And he, no stronger than a mere child, had permitted her to leave him forever!... Several times he was surprised to catch himself speaking aloud.
"No. No. It cannot be.... It shall not be!"
The light went out, of its own accord, and Aguirre continued to soliloquize, without knowing what he was saying. "It shall not be! It shall not be!" he murmured emphatically. But passing from rage to despair he asked himself what he could do to retain her, to end his torture.
Nothing! His misfortune was irreparable. They were going to resume the course of their lives, each on a different road; they were going to embark on the following day, each to an opposite pole of the earth, and each would carry away nothing of the other, save a memory; and this memory, under the tooth of time, would become ever smaller, more fragile, more delicate. And this was the end of such a great love! This was the finale of a passion that had been born to fill an entire existence! And the earth did not tremble, and nobody was moved, and the world ignored this great sorrow, even as it would ignore the misfortunes of a pair of ants. Ah! Misery!...
He would roam about the world carrying his recollections with him, and perhaps some day he would come to forget them, for one can live only by forgetting; but when his grief should dissolve with the years he would be left an empty man, like a smiling automaton, incapable of any affections other than material ones. And thus he would go on living until he should grow old and die. And she, the beautiful creature, who seemed to scatter music and incense at every step,—the incomparable one, the only one,—would likewise grow old, far from his side. She would be one more Jewish wife, an excellent mother of a family, grown stout from domestic life, flabby and shapeless from the productivity of her race, with a brood of children about her, preoccupied at all hours with the earnings of the family, a full moon, cumbrous, yellow, without the slightest resemblance to the springtime star that had illuminated the fleeting and best moments of his life. What a jest of fate!... Farewell forever, Luna!... No, not Luna. Farewell, Horabuena!
On the next day he took passage on the ship that was leaving for Port Said. What was there for him to do in Gibraltar?... It had been for three months a paradise, at the side of the woman who beautified his existence; now it was an intolerable city, cramped and monotonous; a deserted castle; a damp, dark prison. He telegraphed to his uncle, informing him of his departure. The vessel would weigh anchor at night, after the sunset gun, when it had taken on its supply of coal.
The hotel people brought him news. Khiamull had died at the hospital, in the full possession of his mental faculties as is characteristic of consumptives, and had spoken of the distant land of the sun, of its virgins, dark and slender as bronze statues, crowned with the lotus flower. A hemorrhage had put an end to his hopes. All the town was talking about his burial. His compatriots, the Hindu shopkeepers, had sent a delegation to the governor and made arrangements for the funeral rites. They were going to cremate the body on the outskirts of the town, on the beach that faced the East. His remains must not rot in impure soil. The English governor, deferent toward the creeds of his various subjects, presented them with the necessary wood. At night-fall they would dig a hollow on the beach, fill it with shavings and faggots; then they would put in large logs, and the corpse; on top of this, more wood, and after the pyre had ceased to burn for lack of fuel Khiamull's religious brethren would gather the ashes and bear them off in a boat to scatter them at sea.